This show is clever. Every single episode contains a single story, but the first episodes of all the multi-episode arcs all contain these slight hints that things aren’t over with. This episode was the same: it already was a great standalone story, and yet there still are a few things that don’t add up.
Of course there was the obvious end of the episode, in which what feels like the main antagonist made his formal introduction, but also: why was the critic of this episode in jail? Why did Kaishou not reveal that he had this guy’s children taken away from their mother? Why did this guy refuse to ask Kaishou about what was up with the books? There is still a whole storyline here that has yet been explored, even though the end of this episode made it seem like the end of the story was reached.
In any case, this episode once again was just wonderfully written. Once again, this show just comes with twist after twist after twist, and things that seem completely random at first make complete sense once everything is revealed. Beyond that, in order to make up for the way in which this series doesn’t have time to carefully flesh out its characters, it does make the cast fun. This episode inserted these small jokes at the points where they didn’t get in the way of the real storytelling, and especially the android has helped here. This leads to quite an interesting chemistry between the characters.
Heck, I’ll be surprised if this show doesn’t end up as the best Bones show of the year.
Rating: *** (Awesome)]]>
Infinite Ryvius Review – 92,5/100
There was pretty much only one reason why I was really looking forward to checking out Infinite Ryvius: because I had seen it being praised for having very realistic and true to life characters. Now that I finished watching it, I can wholeheartedly agree with that, but just that statement alone also does a complete injustice of just how good this show really is.
The cast in this show is true to life, but by god, that’s not everything. This show has pretty much one of the best uses of teenagers in a space opera I’ve seen. Perhaps only Bokura no surpasses it here, if you really stretch the definition of “space opera”. This show is about the crew of a space ship. The entire cast of Infinite Ryvius consists out of teenagers, but for once, it makes perfect sense in the context of the story, they actually make full use of the young age of everyone to create a storyline that would never have been possible with adults. The fact that everyone is just a kid is vital to just about everything in the story.
What’s also amazing is how perfectly paced this show is. I mean, above I said that the characters are really true to life. They are very easy to relate to, and their actions throughout the series are very realistic. And yet at the same time the creators somehow turned this into a roller-coaster of a series that hardly ever takes a break. I’m completely amazed at how well the creators manage to weave everything together into one series. The cast of this show is huge, every episode brings a ton of new developments for the characters, and yet it doesn’t feel rushed. The story is the complete definition of utter chaos, and yet it’s full of twists, and yet the creators succeeded in making it move naturally. Despite having a ton of characters who all change significantly multiple times, all at their own pace, it makes sure to make all of them relatable, very strongly acted and miles away from stereotypes.
The only thing I’d have to mention against this series’ favor is that there is techno-babble, but it’s not even badly used. This show has its own original setting, and with that comes a bit of terminology that will take a bit of time to remember all of the different aspects of it.
Seriously, this may not have strings of over the top action scenes, but this show was made in 1999. I haven’t seen any Sunrise series made after that that was able to top this series. Not even Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto. It’s an emotional roller-coaster that somehow managed to avoid stereotypes, one-dimensional characters, hamming it up or other kinds of insincere melodrama, and it manages to blend all sorts of emotions wonderfully together. Definitely a recommendation for science fiction fans.
| Storytelling: | 10/10 – Rock-solid themes, fantastically balanced pacing, is guided by chaos, and yet manages to lead that chaos into a wonderful storyline. |
| Characters: | 10/10 – An utterly brilliant cast of characters who play wonderfully off each other. |
| Production-Values: | 8/10 – No flashy graphics, but very good inbetween work. |
| Setting: | 9/10 – There are some very neat ideas. Not just on the backstory itself, but also how it’s used in context with the story. |
Chihayafuru – 07
Character number four: he too has his purpose. There were two big roles for him in this episode. First of all, to develop Taichi. The previous side character was meant to fuel Chihaya’s interest in Karuta even more than it already was. This guy is meant for Taichi, to show that there are other people in his league, other than Arata.
Purpose number two: show variations of Karuta. For me, this is another very interesting way to keep the karuta matches interesting. Chihaya has been completely involved in competitive Karuta, so that she has no eyes for the details around it. Karuta is the type of game which lends itself perfectly for variations, like what happened in this episode with the flipped down cards, which give you a totally different perspective on how you play the game.
Karuta still is a bit of a strange game to me. Especially the way in which players are given the opportunity to memorize the places of each card for 15 minutes. This to me seems to take away part of the fun of actually trying to look for the card that gets called amidst the forest of other cards. Right now, it’s a game with a very high emphasis on memorization and reaction speed, with hardly anything more.
If the creators can keep this focus on such a simple game consistently interesting throughout the entire series like what it’s currently doing, then they can even successfully make a series about rock paper scissors.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Tamayura – 07
Now this was pretty much my favorite episode of Tamayura so far. It was just one huge chunk of atmosphere, and it had an absolutely wonderful balance between doing nothing, and heart-warming moments. That’s really my favorite type of slice of life series: the ones who can achieve as much as possible, while remaining as down to earth as possible.
Most festival episodes, whether they are town festival, school festival or sports festival episodes, have this nasty tendency of appearing everywhere. Most of them unfortunately have devolved into randomly picking a bunch of events from a list of things you normally do at those events, and lumping them together as if it’s some sort of obligation. This episode created a festival with character. At its core it’s nothing new: remembering the dead is something as old as mankind itself. But this festival felt part of Takehara. It’s something that everyone really wanted to share with Potte, and the impending rain was used really well, while at the same time this episode showed some good restraint in not making the drama around it too heavy.
This episode just did a wonderful job of bringing the cast together. We even saw some characters of the OVA again, but even beyond that, this festival’s purpose beyond remembering the dead is bonding people together.
This just shows that this series is made by a team that’s really well versed in how a slice of life series works. Comparing it to Aria, I’d at the moment rate it around Aria the Natural’s level: it feels much tighter put together unlike The Animation, but the character-development is nowhere near The Origination. Compared to The Natural meanwhile, it’s a bit less impressive in terms of originality of both its overall setting and scenarios, but makes up for it by being much easier to sit through (oh lord, trying to watch that entire series took some effort…).
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Mirai Nikki – 06
Um. Yeah. So I did hope for more time to flesh out the characters. With that however, I did not mean to just devote an entire episode on romantic hi-jinks. That’s just boring. At least try to blend things in a bit.
So on one hand this episode was just annoying, with Yukiteru’s mother and all. It’s overdone, it’s not very good, and could have been done much better. It was full of bad cliches from your standard romantic comedy.
What also really bugged me though, was that this episode had no build-up whatsoever. We just have a bunch of random hi-jinks, followed by a shot of psycho Yuno, with no attempts to build up atmosphere. The same goes for the new diary holder. You’re supposed to introduce these characters with an air of mystery. Having a kid as the next diary holder is a surprise. It doesn’t work when you don’t build up this mysterious atmosphere around her and just have her immediately show these dolls of her that have been in the OP for ages. The problem with this show is that nearly every character is crazy. You can’t just throw in yet another crazy character and just hope that it’ll automatically work.
Rating: – (Disappointing)]]>
Ben-To – 06
I must say I love the camera work in this show. It doesn’t have the largest budget, but the clever use of camera angles, along with the soundtrack, has actually made up for this lack pretty well. And then there is the introduction of this episode which wonderfully played with that.
In any case, this was the midway climax for this series. The Monarch really looked like he was going to be the end boss… only he already got beaten. Looking back, he fits much more as a mid-boss like this. Have something more creative for the final fight.
Having said that, I’m impressed with how this show handled this climax. After the introduction, the comedy was completely gone, and it went for action and drama. And I have to say that it worked really well. Liking the Monarch together with the pasts of some of the other characters did a great job of putting some drama under the fights, even though it turned the side-characters into the interesting ones, and not Monarch himself.
And beyond that there still is the rock-solid characterization of this show. I especially like the part in each episode in which the characters just sit and eat what they conquered.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Phi Brain – 07
This show. I still have no idea what to make of it. Why does it care so little about making sense? And why at the same time does it work so well on the emotional level?
The use of kids in this episode was just… bizarre. We first had this kindergarten teacher who is actually a member of POG. She then takes a bunch of random toddlers along with her, without ever explaining what happened to their parents, and brings them inside a dangerous building that’s at the verge of collapsing. Some random bad guy then appears from out of nowhere and locks the door everyone’s in, and instead of helping to solve the puzzles in question she made herself as quickly as possible, she spends her entire time trying to bust open a locked door. Add that to the bizarre leaps in logic this show already has.
And yet the characters in this episode were really charming. And I have no idea why. Granted, the teacher in question had a solid story, and the use of atmosphere was really great, but could that alone have been enough? Nonoha was well acted in this episode, and the characters here are far from tedious to watch, bizarrely enough.
In a way this show reminds me of Suteki Tantei Labyrinth. I’m not sure how many people actually watched it back when it aired, but it basically involved this kid who had to solve some of the most ridiculous mysteries, and even though it was very childish and incredibly far-fetched at times, it was fun and had surprisingly enjoyable characters, unlike what you might expect when you first see it. The thing is however, that that show did have a “so bad it’s good factor”. It was great to see how crazy it could become, and it had A TON of cheese. Phi Brain doesn’t really have cheese, though. Its drama is simple but genuine, but it’s not exactly angst-filled or something.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Fate/Zero – 07
Hmm, the creators really are putting Saber in the underdog role. In this episode she again gets saved from being killed in the midst of battle, she walks into any trap her opponents throw at her, she has most of the enemies going after her, she is the only one who has gotten handicapped. I mean, if she really is supposed to be the king of kings, then she doesn’t need this. This is why I like Kotomine Kirei: at first he seemed to be the one who was going to play the role of main character, and yet his role in the story is a very interesting one as an observer.
In any case though, what I am very happy about is that again the battles are set up so that they can involve as many characters as possible. This episode already gathered three master/servant pairs and that makes things much more interesting than if it was just two characters fighting each other, due to the slow nature of the battles in this series. The intrigue works well, and I especially liked the battle between Emiya and Kayneth and that silver blob of his. Although the climax of the episode was a bit weird, in which Emiya first yelled before shooting, announcing his presence that he masked with so much care, so that Kayneth could react against it…
Oh, and by the way: this episode was very good at building up atmosphere. The thing about this season is that the majority of all good series (not counting the usual crap as Maken-Ki of course) are actively building up to something, and they all do this in many different ways and forms. This season has more long shows than any season since Spring 2009. Fate/Zero is a tad slow for my liking, but it has some very good promise on its second half here.
Rating: ** (Excellent)]]>
Hunter X Hunter – 07
Here’s the strange thing with this series: at first you’d think that they’d try to rush through the first material Brotherhood-style in order to get to the new parts… only for the pacing to slow down significantly afterwards. This episode? It was just about Gon and Killua playing a game with the hunter exam chief. With this pacing, I assume that the creators are aiming to make every episode significantly different from the other, so that every week will be a different experience. Or at least that seems to be the plan until the arcs get longer.
The result is a bit strange. In this way, some chapters are rushed through (most notably this is what happened last week, but also the first episode had this), while others really take their time, like this one. I mean, next week will be completely different, and this episode just consisted out of the characters killing time before it happens. Less than 50% of the episode was spent on some very good characterization. The rest, more than 10 minutes, was spent on a simple game. If the creators wanted, they could have done this in about half an episode by clever cutting and pasting, however I do like the charms of this episode. Building up is always tricky to not drag on, but this episode had a very nice “calm before the storm”-atmosphere that is very different from the norm.
The standout point of this episode however was near the end, when Killua gave up and ran into those two guys. That was the proof that the creators have no intention to tone down the gore in this series and are not afraid at all to make it dive into the darker parts of the story. Now, all that I want to see is hints that they also plan the same with the dialogue. Meticulously detailed dialogue is pretty much a requirement for the Yorkshin arc.
Rating: * (Good)]]>
Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam – 05
This episode was a bit of a step back, mostly due to how it got a bit too silly at times. There is in particular the point in which Fam stood in front of the idiot commander, and the point at which Millia decided to dress up as a maid. That does not fit this setting at all. We’ve got enough moe shows doing that already. Why do so many shows insist in adding a maid, just for the sake of adding a maid?
Then there is the way in which the characters were rather off-model. This unfortunately is typical Gonzo, but thankfully they have shown many times in the past that even after dips like these, they can still deliver excellent action scenes. The best example of that was Shangri-La, which on one hand had horrible off-character models on one hand, and absolutely gorgeous and ground-breaking 3D effects on the other. In any case, the worst were the mechanics in this area, as while Fam just looked off-model, they just looked silly.
This episode meant to introduce the crew of the Silvius. Overall the problem was that there were too many carbon-copies of the same characters. The creators did pick a number of distinct character designs to portray the crew, and characters like the cook, the navigator, the head engineer: there are still plenty of characters who stand on their own. What clever writing should have done is to create just enough mechanics for the setting to feel alive, without making any two of them like a carbon-copy of another. The first season actually did this.
The interesting thing though, was that just as this show looked like it was getting too silly for its own sake… it recovered. the final quarter of this episode was strong character-building and it also added quite a bit of intrigue with Millia’s sister’s whereabouts revealed. The acting in this series is very peculiar. I mean, most of the characters do know how to act, and there are a lot of very solid performances, and then once in a while they slip out into these silly stupid moments, or meet very badly acted side-characters who only appear for a minute. The acting of this series ranges from near the best of the season to near the worst of the season.
Rating: * (Good)]]>