OVA Impressions: Black Lagoon – Roberta’s Blood Trail – 05

by psgels, posted in Black Lagoon



Apologies for this late impression. I just didn’t have the time to check it out. I’ glad that I did, though, because this is an awesome conclusion. It was far from the all out war that I expected: because of the first Roberta arc, I really thought that this OVA would try to trump that. Instead we got something much more character-centric, dialogue focused and horror-like. It worked really well: the build-up paid off wonderfully with this episode.

There were pretty much two major things going on in this story: first of all there is Garcia trying to get Roberta back, and then there is Rock. Their conclusions were very different, but very satisfying, and in a way bitter-sweet. Garcia did a great job in maturing and getting Roberta back to her senses, while Rock’s story ended with a great anti-climax, after just one phone call of Balalaika threw his plans in the water. This is what I consider to be a great pay-off after a lot of build-up.

I do wonder why there were no repercussions for Roberta: I mean, she killed a ton of the soldier’s comrades, but after the fight ended none of them seemed angry about it, and they just let her go. I know that they were in the wrong and all, and that they acknowledged their responsibility, but to me they felt a bit too cold towards Roberta. In the same way Rock went a bit out of character during the first half with his scary faces (his voice was like… totally different from usual). Those are mere details though: the continuation of Black Lagoon was really excellent from beginning to end.
OVA Episode Rating: 8.5/10

Natsume Yuujin-Chou – 32

by psgels, posted in Natsume Yuujin-Chou



From what I remember of the first two seasons, it’s that Natsume Yuujinchou was one of those series where the episodic episodes were actually better than the arcs. The biggest reason for that was that it was just wonderful in writing self-contained stories, and the arcs, while very good, couldn’t match those. Let’s see whether the third season can bring in a difference here.

This arc was very different from the previous episodes, due to the inclusion of someone who can count as an actual villain. /at the moment, he’s not that interesting yet, compared to some of the bad youkai that Natsume met so far. He still needs something, and I hope that the next episode can deliver it.

And again, Nyanko-sensei sleeves Natsume alone unguarded, but in this episode it does make sense: he had no way of knowing that the bad guy was right onto Natsume, and that he’d be particularly interested to get the book of friends (otherwise I can’t see why he’d send six of his subordinates, including himself, after Natsume).
Rating: * (Good)

Ikoku Meiro no Croisée – 06

by psgels, posted in Ikoku Meiro no Croisée



Alice stopped getting on my nerves. Quite a pleasant surprise.

Instead, this episode was completely adorable again. Alice mostly swooned all over Yune, but her enthusiasm is feeling more and more genuine, and her quips towards Claude were actually quite funny. The only part I have to complain about is the part where Oscar came in with the line “oh, you’re fighting. you must be in love with each other!” – seriously, stop using that.

Oh, and this episode was all about dress up and Japanese and French clothing. Again, surprisingly detailed about how these dresses work. The photography part was also really cute, though I do wonder why the creators didn’t explain why Yune’s image of photographs is different. The characterization of this episode overall was really subtle and nicely balanced, with a lot of great chemistry and a good, relaxing atmosphere to boot. And yeah, this was also the episode that hinted at something that happened between Claude and Alice’s older sister. It’s good for a nice bit of drama here.

Oh, and I believe that this is the first anime in which I’ve seen living statues appear.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hana-Saku Iroha – 19

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha



This show has the tendency to develop its characters really, really well, while being really annoying in the process. the previous episode was a great example of that, and this episode continues that trend with Minko. This episode was enjoyable, interesting, and again got quite a bit on my nerves.

Beyond the attention at Minko, I also have to praise this episode for not just looking at her, but rather the entire cast. This episode was quite well balanced in order to give a lot of characters their share of screentime and to flesh them out a bit. It’s especially the small details in this episode that rocked. This episode also finally gave some character to some of the classmates of the lead girls, and despite being yet another school festival episode, I enjoyed the small individual scenes.

Minko’s development isn’t looking out to be as good as what Nako got in the previous episode, though. Her crush on Tohru had always been a bit superficial, and the entire drama around her revolved around it, where she wanted to make good food in their class restaurant to impress him and started yelling at one of her classmates for doing exactly the same. At this point anything can of course still happen, but Nako development last episode was very good, especially on hindsight.

In any case though, the entire cast is growing together at this point, and I hope that the next episode will do the same. For example, Nako helping out her classmate in the art club was surprisingly genuine.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ao no Exorcist – 17

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist



Ah, yeah. Now I remember again that there was a big problem with the original material of this series: it tends to not make any sense.

Before, the problem with the two filler episodes wasn’t that they didn’t get the characters, or that they weren’t enjoyable, but rather that they were just ridiculously stupid. With this episode.. . you could see the traces of that. Thankfully it didn’t reduce any of the characters to morons: they were fine, and actually quite interesting. Instead… the plot got a bit questionable.

In one shot, we see the blacksmith working hard to restore Rin’s sword. Then we switch to the courtroom scene in which Rin is tried, and there the side-characters just randomly pop up out of nowhere with the sword completely fixed. What happened to the transition here? How did they get there in time? How did they fix that sword so bloody easily?

Then, alter, we see Rin enter the classroom. He then randomly bashes the wall that makes those flying things appear around Shiemi. That scene was just meant to show Rin’s blue flames again, which he uses to get rid of those creatures. The same blue flame which is later revealed to be beyond his control and which burned the clothes of Yukio and Shura. I mean, it was a funny scene and all, but please at least try to be consistent here.

Having said that though I can see where the creators are coming from with the new plot. If I didn’t just hear that they stopped right before the best parts of the manga, I wouldn’t have had any problems with them. Instead of everyone getting terrified of him, the reactions are more subtle, which combines hatred at the blue flames with the acknowledgement that it was Rin’s father who killed all those people, and not Rin himself.

The fight against Amaimon seemed a bit anticlimactic at first, but ah well. At the very least someone actually dies upon getting cut by a sharp sword. Again though: consistency!

And at least, the characters still are quite enjoyable to watch and the chemistry is still there and the new material did not reduce them to idiots, so it’s not like this series is doomed, although it probably will become less good if the creators keep throwing these random deus ex machina in its plot. Whether this series will work is all going to depend on what the creators are going to make out of the finale of this series. There’s this Satan thing which has hardly been explored so far which will become the major problem here: the final villain. BY FAR the biggest pitfall for this series is the lame final villain. This also was the thing that proved to be disastrous for Letter Bee’s anime original finale.
Rating: * (Good)

Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope – Week 31

by psgels, posted in Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope



Sacred Seven – 05
You know what? I liked this episode a lot. It’s not that the characters suddenly gained a ton of depth, but rather what impressed me was the vast array of stuff that the creators throw at the main characters. That giant living pyramid: I love it, and it also was really well animated. It reminded me a lot of the series Betterman: there the focus also lied in trying to not die, while waiting for the superpower to arrive to take care of everything. If this ends up going beyond 13 episodes, it still has a chance, because the protagonist HAS potential: he’s this tall goofy guy and actually quite different from your usual protagonist if he wasn’t so damn emo. Because of that I’m willing to wait for his development. Oh, and I just discovered that Sayo Yamamoto was the one who directed the OP, which really does explain why it works so wel amongst Yuki Kajiura’s song and all. But seriously, she should direct another series. Seeing these awesome storyboarded OPs is nice and all, but she’s way too good a director for just that.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Kamisama Dolls – 05
I may not be blogging this series, but I still love this show. This isn’t necessarily because of its story, but rather its storytelling: the way in which it presents its storyline, the way in which the action is written, the episodes are balanced, the atmosphere is created. That is done really well with this series. Seriously: it’s really rare for the most prolific company during a season to deliver in every single show that they’re producing, but Kamisama Dolls is an excellent action thriller show. Every episode so far has been full of emotions and covered a wide variety of moods, without feeling jumpy or unbalanced. This episode continued that trend and only solidified it. The village back-story finally got a lot more depth, the sunglasses guy revealed himself to be quite an interesting character and not the antagonist he once seemed to be, and the chemistry between Kyouhei and Utao: the tension between those two is just great and I have to praise how well they’re acted. Now all that’s left is some development.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Blade – 06
Here’s one surprise. This episode actually seriously made me consider the plot of Blade to be the best amongst the Marvel-series. The reason for that is its underlying themes: Iron Man was about really corny morals, Wolverine was about determination, and the X-Men tried to be about peaceful coexistence, although all of them didn’t really spend too much time on them. With Blade though, it really explores the vampires, and what it means to have them kill a loved one, and having to kill a loved one because they turned into one of them. And here this episode suddenly comes and hints at a possibility that humans can be prevented from turning into vampires with the right care. What does this mean for all of the vampires that Blade has killed? The episode ended tragically, but it still is an interesting thought experiment here.

Overall, I think that aside from Iron Man, the biggest problem with the Marvel series isn’t what they are, but what they aren’t. They’re all pretty good series, but this isn’t the best that Madhouse can do. In fact, the last time we really saw them at their best was more than a year ago, with Yojou-han shinwa Taikei (no offence to Kaiji: it is good, but again nowhere near their best work). Compare that to 2009, which had Aoi Bungaku and to a lesser extent Hajime no Ippo, Kobato and Ride-Back, 2008, in which they completely dominated the entire year with Kaiba, Mouryou no Hako, Himitsu, Casshern Sins and Ultraviolet, 2007 with Shigurui, Dennuo Coil and Ooedo Rocket, 2006 with Death Note, Kemonozume, Black Lagoon and Nana and 2004 with Beck, Monster, Paranoia Agent and Jubee-Chan. What happened to that Madhouse?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Nurarihyon no Mago – 31
Nurarihyon no Mago has one really big advantage over every show aside from Penguin Drum this season: it won’t be over in two months! It’s a bloody shame that the first season didn’t make use of it, because the length is without a doubt the biggest problem with the current summer season. There’s also the other side of the coin: taking your length for granted and dragging on. The director confirmed that the new season will animate up to the end of the Kyoto-arc, which makes me wonder how large that arc must be to dedicate 23 entire episodes to it. What do the creators have in store to prevent it from dragging on? In any case, at least, the past two episodes had solid background, though in terms of storytelling they did end a bit anti-climactic: the most interesting part of this episode was the Omnyouji at the end, and the actual fight with Hagoromo Gitsune felt a bit uninspired for who was supposed to be the previous lord of the pandemonium. I blame Nurarihyon, who did nothing but just try to act cool and take hits without even flinching. I mean, especially at the end they could at least have shown someone freak out at the huge and gaping hole inside Nurarihyon’s chest I also believe that “I’ve put up this barrier which will keep all youkai out for the next 400 years” could have been done a bit more subtle.
Rating: * (Good)

Tiger & Bunny – 19

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



This episode contained the big plot twist. The one that had been looming for ages now and had been hinted at numerous times. It’s again the characters who made it awesome, but I do have one problem with it:

The ending would have been a great cliff-hanger if it wasn’t so bloody overused. Maverick is a great villain, but he also falls victim to the “let me tall you all about my evil plans, because I’m going to kill you afterwards anyway”-syndrome. At least I can understand the reasoning of him: his powers are convenient, but take a long while to load, so without some kind of precaution, nobody is stupid enough to wait for that. It’s a good way to tell about his plans in order to buy some time. Just… don’t pretend that it’s a cliff-hanger and that we don’t know what’s going to happen next.

As for the rest of the episode… is it really that weird for Kotetsu to have trouble saying that he’s losing his powers? How does that make him a ‘retard’, when his pride refuses him to expose a weakness to his partner, who he always tried to look cool in front of. People really aren’t that eager to share their personal problems with others. In fact, just about every character in this series is full of inner struggles, and throughout the entire series we’ve had the people around them just guess what’s up. It’s not like this is Kimi ni Todoke, whore the characters spend an entire season dodging their issues.

This episode, on top of having the big plot twist, also probably marked the depth in this series, where the relationships between the characters are at their lowest. Tiger who tried to keep both of his promises has instead gotten into a big fight with both Kaede and Barnaby, and the next few episodes will probably focus again on him, trying to make up with them.

The big question mark right now lies in the kind of villain that Maverick is: one kick and he’ll be out. At this point, the climax will be either en over the top fight with Lunatic, or a plot to expose Maverick’s lies to the public: something that also could be done by people without superpowers.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Rose of Versailles Review – 90/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




I obviously haven’t seen all of the anime that are out there, and this especially goes for the series that were made in the sixties and seventies, so the following statement should be taken with a grain of salt. But I’d actually wager that at the time that it aired (1979/1980), the Rose of Versailles was better than any other anime that had aired so far. Heck, it would probably take until the premiere of the Legend of Galactic Heroes for this series to leave the top 3 of best anime ever made. This statement is just based on my opinion and the stories that I’ve heard about LoGH, so this obviously shouldn’t be taken as a fact. But damn: this series really blew my mind.

The Rose of Versailles is another product from Osamu Dezaki. It’s perhaps not the series where his direction is the strongest. Instead, what sets this series apart is its plot, characters and setting as it chronicles the events leading up to the French Revolution. There are a ton of things to praise about this series.

Imagine this: most series only take place during a few years, at most. The Rose of Versailles takes place over twenty four years, starting at the point where Marie Antoinette arrives in France to become the future queen. There’s so much character development in this series because of this: you can really see the entire cast grow up and gradually change over time; the amount of character development in this series is really unbelievable. On top of that, the creators actually succeeded in making a great character out of Marie Antoinette: she’s one of the most important characters in the series and the creators did really well in making her sympathetic, yet still retaining her as the wildly irresponsible queen that she was. On top of that, we also have the main protagonist of this series, Oscar. Oscar was… amazing. Charismatic, ridiculously strong, independent and charismatic, and yet with plenty of flaws most notably her pride and with pretty much the best development out of the entire series. I’m not sure what it is with anime, France and cross-dressers, but this series explores every inch of her character.

The characters aren’t the only ones with top notch development. Just about the entire series is the same. It actually starts of like your typical shoujo series, full of sparkles, court politics, nobles, frills and pretty character designs, and only subtly gets darker and darker as the series goes on and the French Revolution draws nearer, up to the point where you really can’t call it shoujo anymore and it transcends genres.

The one criticism is that it has dated a bit, and it does tend to get a bit overdramatic at times: it’s a very theatrical series that has the characters overacting on purpose to get an as big emotional response, sometimes accompanied by those cheesy shoujo sound effects. Still, it’s not like the acting is bad here: the voice actors have an amazing range here, from wonderfully restraint to powerful and over the top. It works for the most parts really well, but there are times where it goes a bit too far in this.

Overall, if you’ve never seen any series from before 1985, the series that I’d recommend the most are the Rose of Versailles for a dark shoujo, Ie Naki Ko for its drama, The Mysterious Cities of Gold for a more innocent adventure. Most of the top series of those days are tests to your patience: Gundam is an endless string of battles and fights, Perrine Monogatari takes a really long time to set up its characters, and Votoms also takes a while to really get going and develop. The series of those days just didn’t have to worry about time constraints and there was much less competition, allowing to spend a lot more time to careful build-up. The three series above however are amazing, right from the start, and they continue to be so through their entire run. Even during the shoujo-esque start of the Rose of Versailles, there’s plenty to like and it only gets better as time goes on.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Amazing plot progression, excellent direction, excellent pacing, wonderful told.
Characters: 10/10 – 24 years worth of development. Just about every character develops significantly and memorably.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Obviously dated, but comparing it to other anime of it time and it starts to look really good and refined.
Setting: 9/10 – An amazing look at the events leading up to the french revolution. It’s not 100% accurate, but it definitely does try to be true to history.

Suggestions:
– Revolutionary Girl Utena
– Onii-Sama e
– Simoun

Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou – 05

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



The entire theme of this week seems to be doing things against expectations. After the previous episode I expected another mystery story where Alice had to solve another case. Instead, we got this strange mish-mash of slice of life, character development and… organizing the stage for a band. I’m not sure where that all came from, but it was definitely something different for this series.

The thing with this episode is that the characters got side-tracked A LOT, however the things it got side-tracked with are actually pretty unorthodox and creative. They range from being ordered by Alice to go to the zoo, picking up a new apron, doing the laundry, meeting this strange rock guy and again: promoting this indie band. It’s a pretty whimsical episode and whether it’s good or not entirely depends on the length of this show.

The thing is, that for a 13 episode series it’s just goofing off too much. For a 26 episode series however this was some great material to flesh out the characters. It’s all going to be a matter of waiting what it’s going to be.

Now, as for the JC Staff cliches, there was a good thing and a bad thing about this episode. The good thing is that the main character isn’t just randomly running into females all the time: it’s actually nicely balanced at this point with that rock guy. The bad thing however is that for some reason beyond me, the creators are trying to make Alice into a Shana-clone! Thank God she’s a lot more eloquent than her counterparts, but it’s really getting annoying to see that JC Staff are trying to shoehorn the same bloody character in every bloody show of theirs. I keep complaining about this, because it really feels like someone took a look at the script and changed Alice to act more like every other bloody tsundere, especially after how different she was in the first episode.
Rating: * (Good)

Blood-C – 05

by psgels, posted in Blood-C



Yeah, this is horror, a genre that I’m a big fan of because of how well you can build up in this genre. It’s not just the fights that are amazing, but all of the quiet moments together quietly build up a very tight atmosphere. The more I watch this series, the more I’m beginning to think that Clamp intentionally made the slice of life scenes as empty as possible.

This episode, things are a bit different, though. For once the formula is broken up by having a fight in the first half, and second of all the second half starts as quiet and random as ever, but then slowly builds up a ghost story about the background of the village. Again, it’s not just a matter of randomly yelling “the village has monsters who eat people!” -it’s all about storytelling and that same atmosphere.

The big question for this series is really whether it was properly balanced. All this build-up is wonderful, but a bit pointless if there is to little time for the actual climax, which is by far the biggest pitfall of shows who take too much time building up. With this kind of story though, this series can really pull things off if it just keeps building up its atmosphere. The ending here is going to be a crucial one: last year I expected similar things out of Sengoku Basara II, but unfortunately the ending there was ultimately disappointing. The big difference for me at the moment however, is that Blood-C has made every episode worth watching so far. At this point I’m not watching the quiet scenes just to get through them and get to the action scenes, but instead they’re part of the overall atmosphere now. Without them the action scenes wouldn’t nearly have as much impact.
Rating: ** (Excellent)