Ao no Exorcist – 13

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist



Holy crap! Flashback!

This wasn’t entirely a flashback episode, but that one did steal the entire episode here. I mean, up till now we’ve seen just Rin being abused and all. But to think that he actually lost it once and violently beat his classmates into the hospital. Also, what was that background song they used there? That definitely was the best background track I heard in this series so far.

Not to say the rest of this episode wasn’t excellent. Rin’s father has been a big theme across the series, and this episode made sure that he didn’t become something like a Jesus figure. This episode showed that he had doubts, and flaws. Up till now we’ve seen him through the eyes of Rin and Yukio. This time we also see him through that strange Vatican girl’s eyes.

Overall, this show really puts me in a dilemma this season. I was perhaps thinking of dropping Ao no Exorcist in favour of one of the new summer season series, because out of all the interesting series, it has the most generic set-up, along with the fact that it probably won’t finish its manga story within episode 24…. but this show is also getting really good. The characters have gotten really enjoyable at this point, and even the new characters like the Vatican girl fit in immediately. Dammit, this show has a generic plot, but it does what it does so well!
Rating: ** (Excellent)
OP: The visuals are interesting, but it’s too J-Rocky for my tastes.
ED: This one’s actually really good. Good atmosphere, good use of synthesizers, simple, yet well drawn visuals.

Steins;Gate – 15

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



I wonder how the nature of time travel works in this series, especially with Okabe’s mysterious ability. Is this series like Noein, where all kinds of parallel dimensions exist right next to each other between those lines every time he (note: he, he’s not aware of anything Cern has been doing) interferes with the past, or is there just one true time-line that can be manipulated, and where Okabe is the only one aware of these changes? Is Okabe desperately searching for a time-line in which Mayuri doesn’t die, or is he desperately trying to bend that time-line into a direction where she doesn’t die?

In any case, mostly whenever fiction uses real world examples for bad guys, they’re always these terrorists, evil armies, villains, those kinds of things. Here though, the world is going to be taken over by an organization that is at the edge of modern science. It both makes sense and is very creative for Cern of all things to be involved (after all, the person who is the first to get his hands on the technology to time travel can pretty much doom the entire world, no matter what kind of position he/she’s in.

This episode was really dedicated to Suzuha and building her into the team. We’re now at the point where she doesn’t have any secrets from the main characters anymore. After the last episode I wondered why she was wary of Makise Kurisu, and not of the obvious villain of Shining Finger, but of course it makes sense: in her time, Makise Kurisu is famous, while shining Finger was just some goon who works in the background. With the past episodes though, a lot of history has already been changed, in the way that Makise Kurisu really isn’t likely to end up working at Cern right now, which means that Cern would need to find a different way or person to create their time machine. It’s probably not impossible for them at this point, though.

It’s also interesting that Suzuha’s plan was pretty much bogged down by her own flaws: the fact that she knew hardly anything about what really went on in 2010 and her shyness. It’s a shame that she didn’t know about the Cern hacking, otherwise she just could have screamed to Okabe to just stop hacking Cern. If she was less shy, she would have found a way to explain that she’s from the future, like what Okabe did in this episode.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Manyuu Hiken-Chou, R-15 and Nekogami Yaoyorozu

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Manyuu Hiken-Chou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character runs away from her village which cuts the breasts out of women.
Okay. Wtf did I just watch? I knew that Manyuu Hiken-Chou’s premise would be ridiculous and all, but this was just completely stupid in every single way. A world in which everything is dictated by breasts? Okay, you have to give this show credit for actually going for such a premise and all, but these are the kinds of shows where you wonder: why aren’t the creators just going for straight-out porn? Why is it still pretending to be anything other than that? The parts where it tries to be serious were also completely ridiculous due to the context in which it all played. This one was worth a laugh for how ridiculous it gets, but it’s not like it’s well written or anything: the action is dull (the creators put more effort into breast movement than actual animated action scenes), the characters are all complete and uninteresting stereotypes. It’s just porn: it’s got boobs (or at least, the uncensored version will. This was also an onslaught of white stripes), watch it if you’re horny or something. Apart from that, don’t bother with it.
OP: At least it’s a bit upbeat, but it’s still very uninspired.
ED: Again a dull ballad.
Potential: 0%

R-15

Short Synopsis: Our lead character writes porn novels.
So… this actually wasn’t the worst show this season. It’s not as vapidly uninspired as Mayo Chiki or Rou Kyuu Bu. It was, however, by far the dumbest show I have seen this season so far. It’s like, the entire cast of this series comprises of morons trying to be geniuses, not to mention the huge amounts of things that are just wrong with the setting here (if you didn’t know this yet: this show is about a school full of geniuses, where the main characters’ talent is writing porn novels). The series realizes that it’s got this completely nonsensical premise, and just roles with it. The result is a ton of bad fanservice, bad acting, uninspired animation and character designs, a dull soundtrack and completely one-dimensional characters, but at least it’s trying to be creative. It’s still among the top 5 worst series this season, but I did expect this to be a lot worse, actually.
OP: Dull and generic J-Pop.
ED: Again, dull and generic J-Pop.
Potential: 15%

Nekogami Yaoyorozu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a youkai who lives together with people.
This turned out to be a laid-back comedy in an overcrowded genre: cute girls doing cute stuff while talking to each other a lot. Having said that though, this probably was among the better versions to come out. For once, the dialogue doesn’t just feel like random banter, but actually tries to go somewhere. There also are a lot of flashbacks, and this episode did try to establish its characters a bit versatile and especially the main character is a likable snarker. These aren’t the type of characters who you get sick of after a few minutes. They’ve got good chemistry and this might actually work with a good combination between random adventures, slice of life and comedy. The key is not having this show repeat itself.
OP: The copy paste OP again.
ED: Nothing special either.
Potential: 70%

Hyouge Mono – 15

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



Might as well start catching up with Hyouge Mono’s latest episode, and really: it’s again great to see how elegantly this series creates its drama. This really doesn’t aim to be the most exciting series, but it brilliantly uses its subtle and slow atmosphere and characterization to deliver its drama… only to follow up with its facial expressions. Oh, those facial expressions: they’re still priceless after fifteen episodes.

The interesting thing is that they really feel apart of this show now, as in they’re not used as anti-climaxes or anything: I’m not sure how, but both the really well detailed facial drawings as the distorted faces contribute to this series. They’re often funny, but along with the pacing, music and direction they really bring out the best of these characters. This episode showed that as well, with a ton of talking, but perhaps just as much non-verbal communication.

It’s building up, but this again was the kind of build-up that doesn’t just try to stall for time until the next exciting bit, but also really tries to deliver a really good story. This episode both built up the tension between Sasuke, Hashiba and Senno, and already used this tension between them with great results. And of course we still have that black guy. On one hand he is a bit stereotypical, in the way that he again is this tough no-nonsense guy, but at the same time he is really well used with Nobunaga’s death.

Oh, and in terms of the tiny details: I like how this series actually keeps track of the hair of its characters: it actually grew back for both Hashiba and Sasuke. That’s rare, because usually when a character cuts his/her hair, it always stays the same length, even though significant time passes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

I’m Back

by psgels, posted in Special Articles

Hey everyone, I’m back from my holiday to Germany. For those intereseted, some highlights include:
– Being completely overwhelmed by the Castle Neuschwanstein and the most beautiful views I have ever seen in my life.
– Meeting a ton f great people, including a Spanish couple, some architecture PHD students, some Belgian travellers, Dutch Students, English students,, a Vietnamese fashion designer, Americans from Oregon, New Jersey and a guy from Seattle travelling together with his daughter, a member of the Australian women’s soccer team as they were about to play the quarterfinals of the world bup, but most importantly Sasa, ChobitsChi and liangchaos. You guys were awesome and it was great to actually meet you in person.
– Walking outside of the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, only to realize that I left my bag in the train. Having to travel to Rostock of all places to get it back.
– Completely randomly bumping into this huge building chock full of grafitti and indie art. I usually don’t like art museums, but this was one big exception and very impressive.

Overall: Germany. Awesome country. Awesome vacation.

In any case, for the next number of days I’ll try to catch up tot he anime I missed, and the comments you all posted, along with deciding which series I’m going to end up blogging this season, and how. The big question being which of the excellent series this season I’m not going to cover weekly.

Hyouge Mono – 14

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



The first half of this episode was nothing special, so I thought that this episode would take a break after the “action-packed” previous episode. Okay, so that turned out to be wrong. This episode was sublime. The acting in the second half of this episode was once again wonderful. Spoilers down below, for those who haven’t seen this episode yet.

Things obviously got hilarious once Sasuke showed up again. Seriously. This guy as a leader is just awesome, and Mitsuhide’s move on him had me in stitches. Not to mention his new look. Oh god. that came out of nowhere. It;’s going to take a while to get used to that…

But this episode really shined because of Akechi Mitsuhide. I’m really not sure what it is, but this series has an amazing sense when it comes to the death scenes. Yes, Mitsuhide dies in this episode, and I love how much time the creators took out in order to show this. This really allowed them to put in a ton of detail, from between his defeat, to him fleeing his castle, to the point where he eventually gets slain. And finally we get to see one of those scenes where someone takes forever to die, done really well. Akechi’s death is slow, but you can really see him get worse with every second. The visuals again were really good, and the voice acting once again was rock solid.

Seriously, with the Summer Season, Thursdays are going to be crazy: Noitamina, plus Penguin Drum, Blood-C and Hyouge Mono. It’s a wonderful line-up. It’s difficult to compare everything because the series this season are so incredibly diverse. There probably won’t be a series with acting as good and refined as Hyouge Mono: this show is just too good for that. However, there are plenty of other ways to stand out. Penguin Drum has its characters, Blood-C has its animation and pacing, Usagi Drop has its realism, No.6 has its setting, and in this way I could go on for the entire season. I have no doubt that this is going to be an awesome ride.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Showa Monogatari – 12

by psgels, posted in Showa Monogatari



So here too we’re nearly at the end. Unlike what I expected, it’ll focus on Kouhei’s father. It makes sense: it’s what this entire series has been building up for, but that does mean that his brother did not really get the time to show off his character. I really thought that he too would get an arc like Yuuko’s, but it pretty much stopped after his date failed.

This episode was build-up to that finale, along with Kouhei’s best friend suddenly announcing that he’s moving far away. That’s the thing with this series: every character’s story is linear, apart from Kouhei, whose is episodic. The stories around him are the least coherent. It’s an interesting mix, that would have worked if the acting was better.

The same acting also got in the way of this episode. I mean, having a friend move far away again is a situation that a lot of people can relate to. The acting during the goodbye scene though was just really bad. Especially Kouhei hammed it up, but the other kids also delivered cringe-worthy performances, and this is both in terms of the voice acting and the animation. What was meant to be a tearful goodbye ended up looking rather silly.

This episode also may have dropped the sickness bomb a bit too often when it kept hinting to both Kouhe’s father AND grandmother’s health. His father was the first to collapse, but I’m not sure what Grandmother’s health is really going to add at this point. I do like how this series keeps fleshing out all of its characters while building up to the finale, though: this episode again left no character really ignored. That’s pretty good, especially since it has been doing this consistently.

Father’s sickness has potential, though. It’s obviously a bit forced, but with the right character development it can make for a nice finale. But do give Kouhei a small role. That yell at the end of this episode felt so disinterested that I’m pretty sure that his voice actor is being forced by his parents to perform this and would rather be doing something completely different.
Rating: * (Good)

Some Quick First Impressions: Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu Ni, Mayo Chiki and No.6

by psgels, posted in No.6, Some Quick First Impressions

Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu Ni

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is an idiot.
Oh god. The creators just completely gave up. I dropped the first season quite early on, but I refuse to believe that it was as bad as this first episode of this second season. This was completely dull in every single way. For some reason, the creators decided to introduce the new season with a beach episode, and a completely uninspired one at that. If this is supposed to be setting the standard, then I really don’t want to know what the rest of this season is going to be. Really, this episode somehow accomplished to not get even a chuckle out of me during the entire episode. It was just random unfunny banter, characters abusing their quirk that already was established in the first episode of the first season and the main characters trying to hit on girls while screwing up miserably. This seems to have been one of the most anticipated series of the season. Why? This was just like any other moe show, aside from perhaps some Shaft-esque visual ideas in the banter that looked suspiciously much like budget cuts.
OP: Boring song, but not the worst, and the visuals at least try out something interesting.
ED: A really bad joke.
Potential: 0%

Mayo Chiki

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a cute girl who pretends to be a guy.
Now this was just stupid. It’s your standard bad fanservice comedy, but with the worst parts only enlarged. The result is a first episode that makes even less sense than usual. The entire premise of this series hinges on this girl pretending to be a guy, where for some reason it’s really bad if even someone found out about her. The problem is that this disguise is utterly terrible and yet this show tries to tell us that nobody figured it out by now. Heck, even when the main character catches her in the toilet (Locks? We don’t need no stinkin’ locks!) he still doesn’t get the hint, and needs to bump into her causing her shirt to burst open (no, really) in order to finally get the hint. The rest of this episode was filled with those bizarre leaps in logic, not to mention that the main characters is overly sensitive to females, making his nose bleed whenever they touch him. Who the hell found that a good idea?
OP: Why do these generic moe shows always need to have the exact same terrible OP?
ED: Again stolen from “Generic EDs 101”
Potential: 0%

No.6

Short Synopsis: Our lead character runs into a fugitive.
If there was one genre that I’d have to label as my favourite, it’d be the adventure/mystery genre. By far the most of my favourite series hover around those series, so because of that I was quite looking forward to this series. As it turns out, Number Six is an adventure series that’s really well acted. Against my expectations it takes its time to show the two main characters get to know each other, and as a result they’re both miles away from stereotypes, even though at first sight they may seem a bit cliched. With that, we come to a bit of a problem though: the pacing. This is a show with just 11 episodes; 12 if it gets lucky. At this point it’s impossible to say whether it knows what it’s doing due to this being a manga adaptation. However, if it can use its slow pacing, yet mysterious setting (that also was well portrayed from the eyes of a teenager by the way, and this episode only skimmed the surface) to actually build an 11 episode story, this can really turn into something special. It’s got the potential, a lot of attention has gone into both the characters and the setting, the soundtrack kicks ass: it has the ingredients. But yeah: manga-adaptation.
OP: Another good song that fits the show quite well.
ED: A simple ballad. Nothing special, but nothing bad.
Potential: 80%

Some Quick First Impressions: Mawaru Penguin Drum, The Idolm@ster and Usagi Drop

by psgels, posted in Mawaru Penguin Drum, Some Quick First Impressions

Mawaru Penguin Drum

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a sister with poor health.
And in the end, this was a wonderful first episode. There was a ton of different stuff that stood out here, but the most important part is that on top of having a ton of neat ideas, this also has an incredibly charming cast of characters. The acting isn’t as subtle as with Kami-sama no Memo-Chou or Usagi Drop, but the characterization is so well directed and colourful that these still are some of the best characters of the season. The different characters play off each other wonderfully, making actual good use that they’re siblings and know each other for their entire lives. Now, on top of that it has a smashing soundtrack, the best background art of the season (and it knows this), it has very strong direction, makes excellent use of repetition, it’s actually got a number of new visual ideas, the transformation sequences kick a ludicrous amount of ass, the plot twist in this episode was an awesome and unexpectedly delivered way to start the story off and the final second… just the final second. This series really knows how to combine its mostly light-hearted and enjoyable mood with dark plot twists. This. Has style. And what’s better is that there are still 23 episodes left.
OP: Perhaps a bit too mellow, but greatly stylish.
ED: Weird visuals and a great song
Potential: 95%

The Idolm@ster

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a cyborg Frenchman wearing a frog suit and riding a unicycle for all we know.
Unlike Uta Prince, The Idolm@ster actually tries out something new. The problem is that I have no idea whether that new idea it’s trying out is actually any good or well executed. Here’s the thing: this series takes the format of an interview: we have a guy with a camera running around, asking questions of all of the idols in this series in order to establish everyone. The guy with the camera is completely bland and doesn’t even speak (seriously: all his lines are just subtitles), and in this manner this series tries to show its huge cast of characters. Now, there are several problems with that. First of all: this series isn’t really clear what shots are shot by an in-story camera and which ones are out-of story shots: the guy walks around, you can see the girls talk to him and answer his questions, but the view jumps around so much, even to shots that are just completely impossible to film with an actual camera. This series doesn’t establish which ones belong to the camera guy and which ones don, unless the lead character also possesses magical teleport powers or something. Second of all: this show has a huge cast. There are like, 20 different characters. This show tries to give character to all of them, AT THE SAME TIME. This first episode is obviously nowhere near enough to make them anything more than blatant stereotypes, and the voice actors didn’t really make things better, as they pretty much acted out the exact stereotype that their character was meant to represent. And yes, there are quite a number of annoying characters here. Still: this is something new and I at least appreciate this series for going in a bit of a different direction, and the chaos of this episode did have its charms beyond the annoying bits. I’m a fan of series with large casts when done well, but the IdolM@ster is really going to have to put in effort to make everyone step away from their stereotype. It isn’t impossible though: there is still hope.
ED: Unfortunately, this one turned out to be nothing more than generic J-pop.
Potential: 50%

Usagi Drop

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is forced to live together with his aunt.
Usually introduction episodes are meant to give a taste of what’s to come. With Usagi Drop though, things are very different from usual: it starts off with a funeral. It shows people together who normally would never be together, it shows them in mindsets they usually would never be in, and most of the people we saw here in this episode are likely to never appear again. It’s definitely an interesting way to open up a story, and this episode really showed some nice things you can do with that format. There already was a lot of implied character development, plus the characters played really well off each other. This was realistic. The drama was really subtle: there was none of the overacting you usually see in anime. This episode especially rocked in how it let everything play off naturally: it didn’t force anything: it just established its characters and gave them the opportunity to let things play out themselves. In the next episode we should really see the direction where this series wants to head for, but this episode sold me already. This is solid like Noitamina should be. Now all that’s left is to actually create a full story for 11 episodes. Plus, this series does deserve plus points for again including a main character who isn’t in his teens or twenties.
OP: Finally another series that goes back to Noitamina’s tradition of weird OPs. It’s quite a charming one.
ED: Relaxing song with pretty neat images
Potential: 85%