I like this show, but I do have a bit of trouble changing my expectations from what I expected it to be, to what it actually turned out to be. I expected this series to be a set of mind games with a ton of mystery and suspense. Instead, it doesn’t focus on building up mystery at all, instead of suspenseful it’s more over the top, and the mind games aspect of the show is rather held back by Yukiteru being a gullible idiot.
But ah well, I guess that that was the intent of this show: it needed someone who can both walk into just about every trap laid in front of him, be wimpy enough to be dragged around so that Yuno can shine, and still at the times where it matters find his balls and act like a skilled action hero. It’s forced, but it does carry the rest of this series, and I do have to say that the new villains here are pretty interesting, with a possibility to be the most interesting villains so far. Yuno in particular was great here.
Though was the underwear scene really necessary? I mean, this is no fanservice show. It’s almost if it’s a prerequisite for a guy to bump into a girl and expose her panties like that. And at the very least: if you’re going to do fanservice: make it creative. Pulling a scene like that only shows that you’re not really putting much thought into this.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Nurarihyon no Mago – Sennen Makyou – 21
What a difference compared to the climax of the first season this is. Back then, this was the point at which everything collapsed in a slew of dull fights after dull fights. This however is much more dynamic. There are a lot of things happening at the same time, and there is a lot of meaning put into all of the fights beyond just “bad guy evil, kill him”.
In particular the resurrection of Nue, or Abe no Seimei was well pulled off here, as a giant fetus floating in the sky. On top of that, there is the irony of Hagoromo Gitsune probably not being the one who killed Nura’s father, but it was some sort of doing from her human part. Beyond that there are a lot of different parties involved that all have some sort of agenda. That’s what makes this finale work. In the first season everyone pretty much melted together. Nobody stood apart.
And on top of that the execution also was a lot less solid back then. Again Studio Deen aren’t the best animators, and one of the hardest things to animate is a battle between small armies. With clever camera work and arc though, a lot of movement was created here. Thumbs up.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Hunter X Hunter – 09
The first half of this episode, I think it actually worked better than in the first series. It was simple and more to the point, just like Gon really. It had a nice build-up of “oh, this is going to take forever”, only to solve things in minutes afterwards. Although, Gon’s voice actress was trying a bit too hard again in this episode. It’s mostly her range. She’s very easy in just yelling all of her lines.
The second half however… it was a bit of a mess. And it’s not the pacing really. When you just look at pacing, then the new series is actually better than the first. It’s just that the voice acting is so much, much worse. The voice actors are trying too hard and especially the blue guy (why is he suddenly bright blue?) was hamming it up. Compare that to the first season, which had fantastic voice acting and which had voice actors who knew exactly when they should be subtle, and when to raise their voices.
What’s even worse is that we suddenly got to see entire inner monologues of that blue guy, which killed off all of the tension that was there already. It added some nonsensical stuff, while it cut out the stuff that made him quite charming (like the way in which he broke his fist, for example). Also, I’m surprised here: the way in which he refused to wake up, was actually a filler of the first season? I really would not have guessed. That really was something good they added back there.
And then there was Kurapika, who really managed to save this half when he saw the spider. It again suffers a bit too much from acting too hard when compared to the first series, but the moment where Kurapika got his red eyes: that was just wonderful. It wasn’t just a great scene. It also showed that the creators here know how to deliver the darker scenes.
Overall I’m quite positive of this series so far. The creators might actually nail it. However, there is one character who I’m positive that they’re going to ruin if they keep going on like this: Senritsu. I won’t say why, for the sake of the people who aren’t familiar with Hunter X Hunter, but I really cannot imagine her with the current focus on overacting from this series.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Tibetan Dog Review – 80/100
Here’s a movie, animated by Madhouse, but voiced fully in Chinese, about the highlands of Tibet. With this it already gets a plus for its interesting setting. It’s also a coming of age movie about a young boy, which is a bit unfortunate, but this mvie has more than enough to make up for it.
It’s an excellent look on the culture of Tibetan sheep herders and in particular a doctor in those areas (the lead character’s father is a local doctor). On top of that, it also has a number of very interesting action scnees involving dogs. Those things set it apart quite a bit from the mould of coming of age movies. It’s a movie that is grounded in realism, yet also packs some nice climaxes, and in terms of pacing it’s pretty well paced: the quiet scenes build up well for the climaxes and they remain interesting for the entire movie.
There are two main problems with this movie. The first is the very unfortunate name that was chosen for the golden dog that the movie is all about: Doogie. I’m not sure whether this sounds any less cheesy in Chinese or not, but the mood of the climaxes did get broken a bit when the characters kept going “Doogie! Doogie! Doogie!” over and over. My second issue is that a lot of the characters could have been more interesting. The dogs are awesome, but the lead character does little to set himself apart from other young leads. The bad guys of the movie are also pretty bland. Some of the side characters, like the old medicine seller and the male lead’s father were interesting to watch, though, but unfortunately the dull characters outnumber the interesting ones.
Tibetan Dog is a very good movie, especially considering its settings, but the director, Masayuki Kojima did work on more interesting stuff. The characters in Piano no Mori were just better developed, Hanada Shounen Shi was the example of a young boy lead done right, A Spirit of the Sun had better suspense. Oh, and not to mention Master Keaton and Monster, of course.
| Storytelling: | 8/10 – Good build-up. Good use of dogs in the movie. |
| Characters: | 7/10 – Unfortunately a few too many bland characters at key positions. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – Well animated, but nothing special for movie standards. |
| Setting: | 9/10 – A movie about Tibet. Excellent, and it makes great use of it. |
Phi Brain – 09
What mind created this? And what was he on while creating this?
So… this was the dreaded school festival episode. Usually it’s part of the pool of episode templates for creators who don’t know how to fill their episodes. In this case, it’s an excuse of the creators to dress up the entire male cast as women. Heck, just look at the screenshots above: Daimon Kaito had to solve a puzzle in a dress, in the middle of a burning circus tent, surrounded by very creepy melting dolls while Nonoha was turned into Snow White. A tent by the way, which was secretly constructed next to the school, making use of how everyone was too busy preparing for the school festival. How do they come up with these things?
Also, don’t get me wrong here: I am currently enjoying this series a lot here. It’s completely ridiculous when you think about it, and I’m not going to stop ranting about that. But that’s the fun part about it. The thing is, that I find being generic a much worse crime than making no sense. It’s anime. It should be crazy.
What’s even more important however, is the execution. And despite all my ranting… this show is doing that well. This episode was all about the student council president, and it actually worked. It’s bizarre, but the characterization in this show is simple, but effective. There are times at which I’d wish that this show would combine its characters more, like involve more characters with its puzzles at the same time, but ah well. This works as well.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Ben-To – 08
The golden rule of comedy: if you’re going to make sex jokes, then make sure that they are good ones.
I’m not sure what happened here, but this was without a doubt the worst episode of Ben-To so far. I’m not sure what happened. Did the light novels have this exact same chapter? Did the animators not have enough budget to animate any more fights? Did they pull in a bad episode director? In either way, this episode was the typical bad episode that bad harem shows use to fill their time.
This episode was meant to introduce the two major characters of the final arc. And they’re incredibly stupid. That’s what I really dislike about most moe fanservice shows: they reduce their characters to idiots, just for the sake of fanservice. This is something I thought Ben-To avoided, but this episode made this show a whole lot more generic.
It’s a good thing that the creators still know how to tell jokes, because things like Saito’s dive were absolutely hilarious. At the same time though: this also was the point where the Saito Pervert joke passed their shelf date. For one they were repeated way too much in this episode, and for two this episode tried way too hard. The jokes were fun when they were subtle, like for example in episode one. This was once again “let’s strip Saito and laugh, and have him generate inspiration for Hana. I knw that there are people in this world who no matter what automatically laugh whenever a penis is involved, but at least try to also cater to the ones who don’t…
Rating: – (Disappointing)]]>
Fate/Zero – 09
Mercilessly killing innocent young boys is nice and all, but the Kayneth gore scene in this episode was by far the most effective gore scene in this episode so far. Gore isn’t just abut blood, but also about making it look very painful. Breaking a finger may not be as bad as stabbing someone in the heart, or hinting at a bloody corpse off-screen, but the way it was portrayed in this torture-like way definitely paid off.
In fact the entire part around Lancer, Kayneth and that wife of his was one of the best parts of this series so far, because of how much change there was compared to the previous episodes. Seeing a suddenly helpless Kayneth with his wife now taking over worked as a really good development. Lancer’s pas was also excellent. We didn’t really get to see exactly what happened to him, but the hints were plenty to give him some new depth, and add that to his strong convictions of not betraying Kayneth, and yes: these are three characters who improved a lot in this episode.
The development of Rider and Waver is more slow and gradual. These two have banter, and over the episodes they grow closer together. It’s the standard stuff, but it works. Rider in particular still has some great lines, and he’s really well acted.
Also, I keep praising series for picking settings that aren’t overused. So of course I really like how Lancer dates back from the Celtic legends. In fact, nearly all the servants come from interesting times in history. There is a lot of interesting stuff in history, so it’s great that there are series like this that aren’t just “let’s glorify our history”. While interesting, I want to see them glorify the history of other areas in the world as well.
Oh, and what I also liked was how this episode turned magic into a science.It was a clever little trick to set up a systematic map of the town’s river and its magic use. But are sewers in Japan really big enough to fit in Rider’s entire carriage?
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Last Exile – 07
And then there are these kinds of episodes, which are completely awesome, go against the childish nature of this series, are full of eye candy and are the full proof that Gonzo haven’t lost their touch. I mean like whoa, Gonzo. How much eye candy can you put into one episode anyway?
I know that I said at the beginning of this season that there would be no other series that would beat Guilty Crown in terms of graphics, but I’m going to have to retract that. The only thing at which Guilty crown is clearly superior is its character animation. Last Exile however just completely blew it out of the water in terms of background art and CG. Where Guilty Crown can’t get further than a bunch of sparkles here and there and futuristic backgrounds that all look like each other, the creators here stuffed a ton of different designs together. The vanship animation was just utterly gorgeous as well.
Also, Giselda. I’m not sure what it is about her, but she is wonderful in her role as supporting character, and this episode made her even better. She makes mistakes, but that’s the great thing about her: she’s not perfect, but the way in which she’s trying her best is just wonderful. With Fam being who she is, she needs someone grounded in reality. She actually realizes very much that Fam is very childish, but she accepts it and does the best she can to support her.
Rating: *** (Awesome)]]>
Nurarihyon no Mago – Sennen Makyou – 20
Oh heck, Persona is dropped. I know that everyone keeps going on about being faithful and all, but this should not be taken to the extreme, where a show is trying to be so faithful and sacrifices being enjoyable and interesting for it in the process.
The next question was though: what series should I replace this with? Kimi to Boku? Nah, that series is 50% good drama and 50% pure annoyance. Bakuman? No, that one has turned into a cheesy soap opera lately. Squid Girl? Again no, because it’s clear that it has run out of jokes. Guilty Crown? Hell no, because of how abysmal the male lead is. That only left two other options, but after watching this episode I figured to choose this one above Horizon.
Hell, Nurarihyon no Mago is a very flawed series. Its pacing is way too damn slow, but now that it has finally gotten to the point where everything’s coming together, I might as well follow it till the end. I mean, it’s about bloody time.
And don’t get me wrong, the new director for the second season fits this series much, much better. Junji Nishimura needs to be put on original series. That’s where this guy really shines. The new guy meanwhile has done a really good job on directing this thing, but with the source material being like it is, there is very little you can do about it. This is the problem with just about any shounen jump series: they all take bloody ages to get to where they want to be. Who the hell found it a good idea to include two whole training arcs in the same arc? These two arcs were by far the biggest flaw of this second season. They completely broke up the flow and took bloody ages to actually finish.
However, now that that’s all done, we can finally get to what we’ve been looking forward to for nearly five months now: Nura and his army taking on Hagoromo Gitsune and her army. And now that we finally got to this point, this episode did deliver here. This episode in particular had some great youkai design, and actually moved quickly, as what you’d expect from an all out war.
The atmosphere also really worked here, plus the art direction has improved massively in this new season. I mean, this series had Mariko Oka (the character designer of Jigoku Shoujo and Ghost Hound), and yet the first season made the character designs all look bland. This season is different: Mariko Oka took the greatly diverse designs from the manga, turned all of them into very vastly different anime character designs, and finally the animators with their crispness managed to show how much care went into all of these designs.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Mawaru Penguin Drum – 20
Yeah, this was the “calm before the storm”-episode of Mawaru Penguin-Drum. After this there are only four episodes left, resulting in God knows what kind of ending. This episode meanwhile was very different from the others: it was slow-paced, actually linear, and it was meant to flesh out the existing plot, rather than advance it.
Thankfully though, this avoided the common pitfalls of the usual calm before the storm episodes. Most of the times, these episodes are boring because they are just trying to delay the inevitable. This episode took its time to explain what happened between Shouma and Himari, it revealed why Shouma and Kanba’s parents did the things they did (that child broiler!), and this episode did actually have a solid build-up and a climax. The aftermath of this climax in its turn, built up this very effective atmosphere for the final four episodes.
Now, the big question will arise again: will this show have a great ending? It’s Kunihiko Ikura, so he’s bound to have something planned. In general, I don’t really care if the creators don’t answer every single question they ask explicitly. Not answering any question is of course also bad, but I disagree with people who dislike series, simply because they “don’t explain everything”. There are plenty of things in this series that can be better left off to the imagination.
Instead, what I want to see from this series is it using all of the build-up that the previous 20 episodes put into it. Take the current series, and push its story and characters to new levels. Pulling enough interesting twists without overdoing it and rushing through the final four episodes. This is a delicate balance that many shows fail to hit, but let’s wait and see whether this series knows what it’s doing.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>