Towa no Quon – 01 Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews



So, Towa no Quon has finally been released. I’m not sure whether I got the full version of the first of six movies, but I watched something of about forty minutes in length. And I will be honest here: a lot of hype went into Towa no Quon, and it has not lived up to that yet. I want to emphasis the word “yet”, because it does have potential, but this first movie cold have been better.

The promo art for this movie looked really good, and I’ll get to the actual production values below, but behind that lies a surprisingly mundane premise: we live in a world where people have superpowers. The good guys (who are mostly teenagers who have powers themselves) want to protect those people, while the bad guys want to… I guess either kill them or exploit their powers through force. It’s all deceptively cliched. The scenarios also did not bring any depth to this concept to this movie yet nor were there any hints, beyond a bunch of sad pasts.

On top of that, it also has fairly bland characters: most are one-dimensional, and even though there are a few adults amongst the good guys, they all stand in the shadows of the teenagers who go out and save the day. The acting is either unimpressive or rather annoying, and none of the characters stands out so far, aside from an obnoxiously nice main character. The villains are also not very intimidating and pretty incompetent at their jobs, not to mention the amount of techno-babble that pops up once in a while.

The storytelling, pacing and animation are very good though. This show may not have gotten a real movie budget, but it does have a number of really talented animators working on the action scenes, and they make the action scenes a feast for the eyes, with detailed movements, bold actions and excellent choreography. The soundtrack is also pretty good, and the movie was well paced, with few points that dragged on. Even shows with cliches can be great, and these are the ingredients that can actually make this work for Towa no Quon in the long run.

It’s also not that all of the characters have bland actors. There are a few characters here and there that look like they can become very interesting to watch over time. At the moment though, they’re a bit overshadowed by the bland ones. This movie series needs time. Can the upcoming five movies make use of that?

Storytelling: 8/10 – A well balanced movie with good build-up, though there’s too much techno babble.
Characters: 7/10 – It’s fine for the creators to hold back and all, but at the moment the characters are too bland and one-dimensional for a standalone movie.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Nothing special during the quiet scenes, awesome during the action scenes.
Setting: 7/10 – Potential is lurking, but for now it still is a bit too cliched.

Suggestions:
– Toward the Terra
– Crystal Blaze
– They Were 11

Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope – Week 32

by psgels, posted in Summer 2011 Kaleidoscope



A small household note: upcoming Friday, Saturday and Sunday I’ll be completely busy, both due to real life appointments, and two certain posts that take up a lot of time to fully write, so I won’t have the time to blog shows as Usagi Drop and Dantalian no Shoka even if I wanted to, so again I’ll mostly cover the series that air early in the week or some of the stuff that I couldn’t watch on Sundays. Apologies for picking these shows a bit repetitively.

Gyakkyou Burai Kaiji – 45
Now, to be honest I did find the method for beating the pinchers a bit far-fetched. It assumed that there were no spare parts, that Kaiji could get his hands on some custom pinchers within a very tight time-limit, that they’d fail right at the exact moment, and that nobody noticed anything about the strange weight distribution of those things (hiding a chemical bomb in them is bound to feel differently from usual wood). Tilting the entire building with 20 tons of water though, was just awesome. It’s deceptively simple and yet completely unintuitive. Although I do wonder what Kaiji meant with that they wouldn’t be found out on the daily level check on the roulettes? I mean, if a level check was used, wouldn’t it reveal his entire plan? The device that they showed is meant to check whether something is level, not whether something tilts very fast. Unless of course a gimmick of the casino is that ALL of the roulettes are tilted… Also, I’m still baffled with that there are still at least five episodes left. The pacing so far has been pretty much what I expected, and yet they’re still nowhere near done yet?
Rating: ** (Excellent; gets promoted to Awesome as soon as I can find a good explanation against the level checks)

Kamisama Dolls – 06
Okay, so aside from that really out of place fanservice scene, this was a really good episode. There’s quite a bit of character development, the sibling subplot is turning out quite interesting, now that Utao wants to make up with her twin brother. There was a ton of background in this episode, the creators explained how the flying dolls work, we got to see the families of the lead characters, and overall the characters and the setting got a nice amount of depth. The series is halfway over, and you still could have fooled me with that it’s going to wrap itself up within six episodes. So far we’ve got a well told series that alternates between comedy, action and drama really well with only the fanservice feeling out of place. The lead character is bland at first, yet he does have some interesting flaws to his character. Everyone’s well acted, it’s funny, and it knows how to build up. Now it’s up to the second half to use this. And solve the problem of having an ongoing manga…
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Nurarihyon no Mago – 31
This episode introduced all kinds of potentially interesting characters. Too bad that they’re just used for a training arc. So far, I’m not really that impressed by it. Nura learned the technique a little too easily, but most importantly there doesn’t really seem to be much depth to his technique. Overall, Nura’s reason to go to Kyoto seems kinda weak at the moment: his classmates suggested to go to Kyoto and then he suddenly remembered that the killer of his father lives there. I do hope that this will grow into more than just a simple tale of revenge. Nurarihyon kicked ass, though.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Sacred Seven – 06
Ack, it’s a shame that this will only be a 1-cour series. That pretty much changes everything. Of course there is the slight possibility that the creators have a second season planned, but I’ve seen too many series that promised the same thing to really be able to buy that. Because of that, we’re already halfway through the series… so what has it accomplished? Is it building up to an interesting plot? No, Knight is a very boring and emo villain. Its atmosphere? Nope, that also seems rather random and disjointed, more aimed at silly comic relief than consistency. Characters? They’re still emo, their acting is still flat, and in this episode Ruri went pretty far out of character in the quiet scenes. Setting? It’s a school and people have superpowers: nothing really interesting. In the end I can only praise this show for its action scenes: those are really good, and this episode was no exception. The solution?? Why didn’t you just make a 6-episode OVA with a compilation of the best action scenes?
Rating: (Enjoyable)

Steins;Gate – 19

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Holy crap! Talk about being completely different from the previous episodes! While those episodes were tragic and bitter-sweet, this one was just completely brutal. The writing in this was just brilliant, as things slowly became clear about what was going on with Moeka, and how any of Okabe’s attempts to change that were futile.

What’s bizarre is also the strange message that she sent. Because she sent a message to herself to buy a new phone, she received the message from a mysterious FB (who seems to be the mastermind behind everything) with the message of where the IBM 5100 was… and yet she just put it in a safe and didn’t hand it over to her subordinates. What’s going on here?

Right now this might be a bit premature to say this, but at this point Steins;Gate has pretty much the best plot of the year for me. Of course, the series hasn’t ended yet, and that FB could very well turn into a generic villain after her revelation, or a very forced alias for a main character (Visual novel readers: please don’t spoil anymore than you’ve already done), but the way the plot is weaved together, the plot twists are delivered, and how this series changes with every passing episode, there isn’t really any other plot to match up to it. Even Madoka Magica, Hyouge Mono and Tiger & Bunny are inferior to it with their storylines.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

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)