Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope – Week 33

by psgels, posted in Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope


Blade – 08
Okay. That was one mid-boss that I didn’t see coming. With this, I’m sure: on top of having the best characters out of the Marvel-series, Blade also has the best story.

Sket Dance – 20
I’m… not sure what to think of this episode. You see, my opinion of this series has gone down during the second half; it just isn’t as funny as it used to be, and more and more jokes fall flat or just don’t work. And here this episode comes… and it’s entirely devoted to bad jokes. I don’t mean the jokes that are so corny that you’re forced to laugh. No, this episode was entirely about either jokes that fall flat, or jokes that are so ridiculously obscure that on a few people who know the context will get it. The subbers also completely missed the point of this episode by trying to explain them. But yeah: listening to jokes falling flat over and over remains annoying, whether they’re tongue in the cheek or not doesn’t matter here.
Rating: * (Good, but very annoying))

Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji – 46
And this is the point where this show is starting to drag on again for me. This really reminds me of the first season again, in the arc where Kaiji’s ears were on the line and things took absolutely forever to move on. This episode… did not really know what it should talk about while waiting for Kaiji to run out of nearly all of his balls (so that it can really ramp up the tension next episode) and just started to repeat the same thing over and over again. Especially that narrator was guilty of that. The background on Ichijou was nice, but didn’t really fit well at this stage. Oh, and the creators are trying too hard with the old guy. Being insane is nice and all, but those antics serve no purpose and distract from what’s really important here: defeating that damn bog.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Dantalian no Shoka – 06
This episode was… strange. Not only did the main characters make no appearance whatsoever, they were replaced by a priest like figure and a girl with the worst fashion sense imaginable. Normally I just use that as an insult against shows who give their characters overly complicated outfits, but this girl actually walks around in a straitjacket. In any case, what I like about Dantalian is how its mysteries are always incredibly far-fetched, yet imaginative. This episode was no exception and it came together really nicely at the end. The town it all placed in also was really well designed, and I don’t just mean the live action-like buildings that were used: the entire scenery and city lay-out just looked unique.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Usagi Drop – 07
This episode started a bit out of place when it was suddenly revealed that Haruko has relationship problems and ran away from home, and for about four minutes this suddenly turns into a romantic comedy. Daikichi’s acting also felt a bit unnatural and overall it felt a bit weird. And then this episode just made up for it with a terrific analysis of Haruka’s character. This show is about raising a child as a single parent, and this time it took a look at the cases where being a single parent is just impossible: housewifes. Haruka really feels like she made the wrong decisions during her twenties, even though she kept looking to the future. The thing however remains that the creators used Haruka’s character to prove a point they wanted to make, instead of doing it the other way around. Because this show is so realistic, this does stand out.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ao no Exorcist – 19

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist



Yeah, if this was indeed anime original like I’m suspecting, then it definitely was the best anime original episode so far. This really allowed the characters to shine, and it had really nothing to do with the main plot. It just showed the characters having fun and preparing a surprise birthday party for one of the side-characters. But you know what? That’s all this series needs right now.

Instead of the forced and cheesy drama from last episode, here the drama was really genuine. Birthdays are very personal and we learned a lot of new stuff about the cast. Especially Rin and Yukio’s image of a birthday cake was hilarious, but there were plenty of laugh-out loud moments in this episode and it as all around enjoyable to watch. The drama was subtle, and there even was a good aftermath to the disappointing previous episode (of course Konekomaru would still be a bit cautious around Rin after what happened there).

The big problem right now is that I don’t care about the main storyline anymore. Plot? who cares about that plot? Just fill the rest of the episodes with more episodes like this that just show the characters having fun with each other. There’s no way for Satan to become a good villain at this point. Why should we care about that evil teacher? And Yukio’s health is just forced beyond belief. It’s going to make for a ridiculously cheesy and predictable ending at this rate. So what if things don’t get resolved. Let’s just assume that after six years of training the protagonists become good enough to take on Satan. It’s better than the direction where the show is currently heading at.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Tiger & Bunny – 21

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



Okay, so Maverick’s plan myay have holes, but it’s damn fun to watch it unfold. It’s bold and imaginative, and yet not completely stupid or overly complicated, and Tiger is really going to have to put in effort in cleaning his name. This episode was wonderful in showing his confusion in trying to figure out what the hell happened. He had no reason to doubt Maverick until it really became obvious what was going on through that news broadcast, so he was constantly trying to figure out what the heck happened. His acting was excellent throughout this entire episode.

Oh, and Kaede also stole the show in this episode. She really showed a different side of hers in this episode, and I loved the way she reacted to Kotetsu’s real identity. Now, furthermore: the creators introduced her powers for a reason, meaning that she’s not simply going to play the role of hostage. I’m really looking forward to seeing how she’ll end up getting used.

Now, the big challenge for the creators will be to convincingly return everyone’s memories. We’ve already seen how Maverick’s powers work: they malfunction when they start to believe something that contradicts their fake memories. Barnaby really believed that Jake didn’t murder his parents after Kriem’s confession and the fact that there was no Ouroboros sign on Jake’s hand. In other words: this really will be up to the scriptwriters. They have to take the current cast of heroes, and make us believe that they believe that Kotetsu (a complete stranger in their minds) isn’t a murderer. This can VERY EASILY lapse into cheese.

Oh, and on hindsight, I also want to praise the creators for the use of the red herring of Dorothy. It both was a great way to give character to Sky High, explain what Barnaby’s parents were doing, and reference back to The Big O (a uniquely great but underrated series). Sunrise, I’m really glad that you’re going back to the habit you seemingly abandoned five years ago, releasing all kinds of interesting and original premises. Here once again we have a show that worked out amazingly.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou – 07

by psgels, posted in Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou



Now this is really more like what this series should be! A four episode arc that really allows the creator to take their time to flesh out everything, to build up intrigue and atmosphere. The mystery in this series really is excellent and really well written. If the next episode handles things right, I can see little in the way for this arc becoming the best arc so far.

What I really like about this series is that the mysteries aren’t just of “the butler did it”-variant, but there are tons of details about them that just make them more intricate. There are many layers that make solving them a lot more challenging than usual. Unlike Gosick, the gathering of intelligence makes sense and things flow logical into each other.

I also think that amongst the Gosick Trilogy, Alice is the best amongst her counterparts, or at least around the seven episode mark. Dalian of Dantalian no Shoka unfortunately turned out to be just annoying, but I even feel that she’s more dynamic than Victorique, who at the beginning was just a simple genius who once in a while showed a cute side. Alice’s dialogue is always interesting to read whenever the fanservice isn’t involved, and her bond with the male lead doesn’t just consist out of tsundere type insults. Instead they can just have normal conversations, and Alice’s insults are usually much more subtle than her counterparts.

Now, whether Alice will really turn out better than Victorique overall… that totally depends on her development of course. This episode gave a big hint that that’s coming somewhere, but the problem with this series is that it still feels like a 13-eepisode series, pretending to be a 24 one. This show is arc-based, so it won’t have an as big of an ending problem as No.6, but the current pacing makes sense for 24 episodes, but not for 13 of them. With one arc taking up a whopping four episodes, there’s hardly any time left for the rest of the content.

Oh, and the characters were actually playing the Colonists of Catan here. That’s a reference I never expected to see in an anime. 😛
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Blood-C – 06

by psgels, posted in Blood-C



Holy crap! When was the last time we saw such uncompromising villains? I mean, being monsters is one thing, but this was just something of a completely different level: once they determined Saya to be a threat, they actually wasted no minutes in not just going after her friends, but also outright murdering them, and actually succeeding. These guys are definitely something else. Saya may succeed every time in killing them and all, but every time they manage to take people with them. They’re terrific in actually posing a threat, rather than the usual villains we always see who are either morons, or fail to kill off the important characters due to them being important characters.

With this, I also understand the reasoning of the creators to make Saya’s friends this bland. They could have pulled extra background, like dead parents, or complex back-stories, but the whole point of the slice of life series was for Saya to live a normal life with the only thing special about it the small details, like happening to live next to a baker who sells exotic sweets. It indeed was all for build-up, because that same tension could now be cut by a knife during the aftermath of Nono’s death. The atmosphere during this was just terrific, as it progressed with the same slow pacing as it has ever had.

It’s definitely a different way of building up the cast compared to the other end of the extreme: No.6, which tries to stuff as much details into its characters as possible. Blood-C instead depends a lot on the things that aren’t said. They’re both very tricky to really do well. At the moment I’m convinced that No.6 is going to nail its attempt. As for Blood-C, I don’t want to say that yet, but that’s only because I remember what happened to Sengoku Basara. The thing however, is that Blood-C is so far much, much better in keeping up and building its atmosphere, compared to Sengoku Basara who just kept on building up and building up, only for a few really good episodes and an ending that disappointed.

For a long time, this is also why I don’t minded Nurarihyon no Mago’s strange turn in focusing more on Rikuo’s friends: they were just spending time together, having fun and nicely fleshing out their characters without actually developing. The big problem with that show however is that all this build-up never really paid off. It was just… there, getting in the way of just about everything else.

I don’t mind a really slow pacing, as long as it’s used consciously. Blood-C has kept showing that it is one of those series, albeit in an unorthodox way that definitely isn’t for everyone. Only now it has been hinting at background, which really shows that it’s planning to reveal its background at a very late stage. That can work too! There have been tons of great series that build up a ton of intrigue and ended up closing off wonderfully by wrapping everything up. This isn’t a manga adaptation, so the creators know full well how much time they have. The big question right now is who they’re going to use the movie in this. The point is that it will take a long time for that movie to arrive. It’s therefore crucial for this series to really have a good and satisfying climax at episode 13, or otherwise the wait will just be too long (like what happened with Eden of the East, for example).
Rating: *** (Awesome)

No.6 – 07

by psgels, posted in No.6



This episode was great, even for this series’ standards. The script, it left no minute wasted. The dialogue was incredibly meaningful here, but the most amazing thing is that it just kept going: it just kept pushing its characters forward, it just kept developing them, it just kept showing them pour their heart out. Okay, so Safu had to get kidnapped for it to happen. The results were amazing.

I really wish that Fractale would have had the chance to take a look at this series, and take its example, because it does just about everything right where that show went wrong. It’s got a ridiculously strong bond between the characters, a strong story and instead of wanting to goof off or ignore the interesting parts of its story, it fully focuses on them. The drama in this episode was heavy, but it was entirely based on the choices that the characters made for themselves. Instead of dragging this out, the creators analyzed it, and instead made it so that it would also get resolved quickly. Sure, a strange coincidence was needed for that, but within that series it’s just a small detail.

Speaking of small details, there’s something about the animation that I also really appreciate in this series, even though it’s just a small detail: the characters’s faces, and especially their mouths. Nowadays, in just about any anime, mouths are just a bunch of lines pasted on top of a characters’ face that move up and down. Here though, there are these scenes that actually try to animate the fact that the characters have lips, and they actually try to make the characters’ faces stand out. In the past there were quite a few anime who did that too, but lately this has died out nearly completely in anime. It’s a shame to lose such a kind of a detail that can normally do wonders in making your cast come alive.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Mawaru Penguin Drum – 06

by psgels, posted in Mawaru Penguin Drum



I was happy enough when I learned that Yoji Enokido, the writer of Utena would be creating a new original series with Star Driver. But then Penguin Drum came around and completely blew it out of the water. That series just looks normal compared to all of the details that have been stuffed into Penguin Drum. The direction in this episode was once again just brilliant.

Ringos’ background was just wonderful: the direction behind it was amazing and it really showed why she has become obsessed over Tabuki, while at the same time this episode continued to push her story forward with her blatantly creating a house under Tabuki’s floor in order to be with him all the time. It definitely makes her more than just a stalker when her older sister came into the picture, but her actions remain just weird. What’s even weirder is that multiple people chose the project name “M” in this series. As if this couldn’t get any more confusing.

The animation in this episode was also really good. There were some artistic scenes, the camera angles were great and imaginative and full of symbolism as usual. It really seems like a lot of attention has been put into every environment as well, and the music is the same. The individual tracks may not be as good as the individual tracks of No6, but like Utena the music is consistently excellent: the creators made every track stand out.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Steins;Gate – 20

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Whoa. He realized. Okabe realized the thing that had been glooming in the background for ages and that we were all looking forward to: if he reverts back the first D-Mail, Kurisu will end up dying. I’m really looking forward to seeing Okabe prevent that, while at the same time preventing her from joining CERN and create the time-line where Mayuri dies.

I do wonder, though: how does Okabe keep travelling back in time? Sometimes he uses the D-Mail, yes, but at others the time just goes back, and while sending FB’s message in this episode he reverted back to Moeka’s apartment. Are we to assume that Okabe goes back to Kurisu immediately, wait for her to complete the brain travel device and travels back using that?

And yeah: FB’s identity: it all makes sense now, or at least the big question of how CERN knew so much details about their plans: they’re just a case of poor sound ceiling isolation. His motivation was very clear, and he was really a tragic character and I really liked how they tied Suzuha to him, without making her part of CERN’s plot. It really was a clever way to flesh out a villain who you don’t want to be known as a villain yet.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 33

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



This episode started a little clumsily (Natsume escapes, gets pulled down a hole in a well hidden place, is about to be attacked, and WHAM! Nyanko-sensei appears from out of nowhere. Didn’t expect Deus ex Machina from this series), but as it went on it once again was an excellent episode. This arc was very different from the other episodes, but the pay-off was just wonderful.

Also, with this episode I also realized something else: anime tends to abuse fast healing. I was really surprised when the wounds that were inflicted on Natsume and Nyanko-sensei… actually hurt. Especially the way Nyanko-Sensei got animated along the way was wonderfully done: it wasn’t life-threatening, but he really felt weak after having an arrow lodged inside of him. Overall I can understand why anime makes their characters very fast healers and all, but it’s much more satisfying to watch someone get hurt… and actually get hurt.

The big strength of this episode, and this series overall by the way, is that it has really good endings that throw a subtle twist and give an extra dimension to the characters involved. Here too, where that Matoba guy threw that anti-climax and it all turned out that he came for nothing. The storytelling also really came together at the end.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hana-Saku Iroha – 20

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha



As expected, this episode was not as good as the Nako-episode, but it did avoid the cliched way to solve everything, and Minko definitely received some development. Festival arcs remain a dime a dozen, and while this episode wasn’t amongst the better ones out there, the characterization still managed to shine.

Instead of the cheesy “let’s all make up and be friends now”-speech, Minko actually gradually made up with her classmates. She was really calm in this episode at the points where it mattered, unlike the previous episode where for some reason she refused to explain exactly why the omelet rice would be impossible. It’s much more fun to watch her character this way. But yeah, her problem is that things with Tohru still aren’t going anywhere, or at least: things aren’t changing. This episode did tell us that Tohru knows Minko’s cooking really well; that was a very nice touch. Oh, and Ohana was a really great side-0character here, who made sure to throw in a light note once in a while, while at the same time Nako and her friend also were surprisingly good.

I just get the feeling that this series is deliberately ignoring certain things in order to save them for later. We got this at first with Nako’s shyness: that to disappeared for like, thirteen episodes before it returned. In the meantime we also haven’t heard of Kou in ages either. My best guess about what the ending will be about is indeed the love polygon. This does sound a lot less interesting than Ohana’s issues with her mother, so let’s see how the creators are planning to make this one interesting. What I really hope will happen is that the focus on the final climax will rely more on the themes of “working” than the romance. That one has been built up much more consistently in any case.

Oh, and while I’m bitching a lot about this series, but I do consider it to be very good. It’s definitely something else and it always manages to find ways to annoy me and flesh characters out in ways I did not see coming. It’s really well detailed, but because of that I just keep finding things that get to me.
Rating: * (Good)