Gosick – 21

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Interestingly this was the kind of episode that started off rather dodgy, only to redeem itself as it went on. It’s strange, but as the episode went on I caught myself getting irked at quite a few things, and yet when the episode ended it justified all but one of them.

So let’s just get the one wonky part about this episode out of the way first: I usually really like it when a series tells its story through a play, but this was a rather silly example of this trope. The entire play was silent, only to be narrated by the audience. That… didn’t mesh in the slightest.

Also, as Victorique explained the mystery of the Coco Rose, something really felt missing. The whole story just didn’t match up to the previous arcs. So of course she only told part of the truth as a refusal to cooperate with the ones who tried to use her. It really begs the question as to why her father put so much faith into her, but this was actually a pretty good strategy of her to just break this faith and getting him to lose interest in her. Right now she has found an ally in Kujou, which allowed her to do the thing she previously couldn’t do out of fear of being alone.

The way in which Victorique suddenly announced that Leviathan was the daughter of the queen was completely random, made no sense and only made the Leviathan story less interesting, so I’m glad too that that was a lie. My guess is that somewhere, she read that the queen had a servant who looked just like her, and with that she was able to piece everything together as soon as she found out about the baby she had. The way in which they just “bumped” into the real queen at the end was… convenient to say the least, but it was a great way to close off this arc and fill up the gaps.

The Coco Rose still isn’t the most interesting arc of Gosick, but it still turned out to be much better than expected. With three episodes left, the finale will probably start next episode. I originally thought that the final arc would just flow out of the Coco Rose arc, but instead this episode left us with a really bored main villain and the main characters returning home.

Instead we’ll be getting a short final arc of only three episodes. It’s here where the creators of the anime need to show what they’re worth: short finals are either awesome or really rushed.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hyouge Mono – 10

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



I will be talking about major spoilers right here, so people who are still following the subs (really, do give it a chance despite their slowness! This show is much, much harder to translate than any other series this season) might want to look away. I warned you. This sentence is meant to prevent spoilers from showing up in aggregator sites.

That was one of the most badass deaths I’ve ever seen. I mean, holy crap. I never expected the creators to kill off Oda Nobunaga this early in this series despite being the second most important character in the series, but the way in which he went was just completely mind-blowing. His final words were just the epitome of manliness. I couldn’t pick up whether that pot he obtained had anything to do with it, but either way: the beginning of this episode was just incredible.

And besides that, this completely changes everything about this series. Sasuke now finds himself without the master he’s been loyal to for sixteen years now (that was the right number, right?), and if I’m not mistaken, he has gotten dangerously close to accessing one of those three so-called legendary ceramics. What the hell is the rest of this series going to be about!?

The pacing also was just amazing. The slow way in which every scene played out was an amazing build-up, plus the graphics also were better than ever. I can’t believe how smooth the animation got at certain points here: that was like, completely fluid. The creators really did a wonderful job in order to bring this story to life, and the direction also was just fantastic, creating an impeccable atmosphere. I’ll stop now before I run out of adjective. Bottom-like: one of the riskiest and most unique shows of the season showed here once again that it’s one of my favourite shows of the season.
Rating: **** (Fantastic)

[C] The Money of Soul and Possibility Control – 09

by psgels, posted in The Money of Soul and Possibility Control



Yeah, this was rushed, but then again, it already was clear that C was too ambitious for Noitamina. At the very least though, it hasn’t followed the same path as Eden of the East: this series has not slowed down, and instead of skipping things, it’s trying to do as much as possible in the time it has remaining.

But heck, this show is rushed, but at the very least it’s still able to get its messages across. That for me puts it ahead of shows like Eden of the East which too was ambitious but just got its entire pacing wrong when trying to fit its story in its limited time, and Kuragehime which just gave up at the final episode.

But I have to praise everything around Mikuni in this episode: this episode showed him sacrificing the country’s future (read: children) in order to catch the shock-wave that was caused from the south east Asia market. It was both wonderfully directed and it continues to flesh out the whole setting here. And heck, loaning out your future sounds very abstract, but what most people are doing here is actually loaning out their children for money. There still are many questions here, for example it keeps getting hinted that Mashu is Kimimaro’s daughter, but then it makes no sense that his father walked around with one as well.

The weak point of this episode was the drama around Kimimaru, or at least that’s what I thought when watching this episode. Thinking back, it’s just poorly acted. The reason the kiss felt weird was because the animation was very wonky and the dialogue clunky. In terms of character development they did exactly what they needed to and strengthened the plot by showing what Mikuni did to the people of Japan. The acting is still bad, but I’m really surprised that this show hasn’t fallen apart under the weight of its own plot yet. And that’s the thing it needs to remember: yeah it’s flawed, but as long as it doesn’t run into a wall it can still end up as a really worthwhile series. The big pitfall for this one right now is leaving a bad aftertaste: the final episode will be crucial for this one.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Dororon Enma-kun Meerameera – 10

by psgels, posted in Spring 2011 Kaleidoscope



These final weeks I’m going to be revisiting my favourites of the past season that I didn’t blog, or any other particularly awesome episode that pops up. This week’s episode of Enma-kun was completely crazy, so I couldn’t pass up this chance. It’s also a good point to talk about the comedies in this season in general.

Because there have been quite a few comedies this season: aside from Enma, there was Gintama, Hen Zemi, Azazel-San, Sket Dance, Fireball, plus the half-comedies of Hyouge Mono and Tiger & Bunny, and those are just the ones that made me laugh. With this many series out there to get some laughs, especially for the pure comedies, it’s certainly difficult to find any lasting impact: what series will be remembered years after this season?

I think that here, it’s going to matter a lot what series managed to set themselves apart. Especially with so many sequels, this matters even more: can these series really prove that they were worth it to expand further upon. And I think that here, Gintama, Hen Zemi and Azazel-san pulled on the short end: Gintama’s comedy episodes have mostly been pointless and instead it should have just stuck with its serious arcs, which really are good. Hen Zemi meanwhile never really succeeded to step outside of the OVA’s shadow. Yeah it added nice things to the characters, but overall it’s not enough to gain any lasting impact. Azazel-san meanwhile is too inconsistent: Moloch was brilliant, but too often I get the idea that the creators lacked inspiration for good episodes and characters. It’s the kind of one trick pony comedy that it unfortunately couldn’t avoid.

The ones that set themselves apart the most were Fireball Charming, which improved upon the original with some great creativity and visuals, and Enma-Kun, who despite being completely juvenile had consistently the best ideas of the pure comedies this season, added to how incredibly entertaining it has turned out. It’s the kind of roller-coaster ride that never leaves a room for taking a breath, and this episode was one of the best episodes so far. It once again was wrong on so many levels but its huge amount of energy made it one heck of an enjoyable ride.

And the episode was basically the lead characters trying to turn the home base of the Youkai Patrol into a giant robot and screwing up horribly in the process, with just bout everything going wrong, and somehow this lead to some of the funniest scenarios I’ve seen this season so far. Especially Kappaeru was hilarious: both when he was randomly goofing off in the background and whenever he kept eating important plot devices. When he first appeared in this series I really hated this guy: he really looked like the usual pointless side-kick. So okay, he turned out to be a parody of that. And I must say that it was a hilarious one: in just about every episode since the third he has been hilariously useless.

Also, what the hell did the creators do to poor Yuki here? An angels are actually those stereotypical Americans? What the hell?

The trend for comedies in 2010 and 2011 has definitely been to explore taboos. It’s nothing new what this series is doing right now: there have been a lot of series about toilet humour by now. It is an interesting trend, though. At first you might think that all of these series are just trying to jump on a bandwagon with uninspired series. And that’s indeed how this started: I believe that Juuden-chan was the kick-starter, realizing that both Gintama and Kanokon were surprisingly successful, it too tried to push its boundaries. What followed were more utterly horrid fanservice shows of Chu Bra, Ladies Versus Butlers and Qwaser, so yeah: it seemed like a terrible trend began.

After that however, series started to jump the bandwagon that actually challenged each other, and pushed each other to explore these boundaries in interesting and funny ways: first there were Mitsudomoe and the Hen Zemi OVA, then Panty and Stocking came along, Milky Holmes aired, and suddenly these series that supposedly had toilet humour ranked themselves amongst the better comedies each season. There’s a ton of stuff happening in this genre and the shows are pushing each other to produce new and interesting stuff. Even Hen Zemi and Azazel-san, while they won’t have any lasting impact, do feel fresh and come with something interesting that doesn’t make me abandon them. This actually is pretty healthy competition here.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-Tachi wa Mada Shiranai. – 09

by psgels, posted in Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-Tachi wa Mada Shiranai



Ah, it’s almost a shame that there are just two episodes left, but that’s the strength of a good Noitamina-series: they’re short, but really, really sweet. This episode was the calm before the storm: preparing everything for that finale, and it’s promising to become an awesome one that is going to involve every single character significantly.

I really liked how both Jinta and Poppo nearly broke their character. Unlike Yukiatsu who isn’t afraid to show his personal feelings or Naruko who is terrible at hiding them, both of them have been quite good at dodging these things. This time, even that composure broke. Especially Jinta, who right now is the one threatening to screw everything up.

As to the “big plothole” of this series, I think that it has a lot to do with this. While it remains questionable why Menma waited so long on announcing her presence, it is clear now why Jinta didn’t push her to do that: it’s pretty much as Yukiatsu said; Jinta wants to stay with Menma and wants to have her for himself, while at the same time he still has parts of the attention whore that he was when he was younger.

Meanwhile, Tsuruko also finally showed some new things of herself. She really is going to be a big mystery for that ending as well: she’s the most composed member of the cast so she really had relatively few scenes to show her character off compared to the more unstable characters, but with Yukiatsu getting stranger and stranger (he’s also hitting on Naruko now? Is this because he’s interested in her or because he just wants to take everything away from Jinta?) we finally get to see that she too has at least a crush. Her character was invaluable to the series, though. It showed that the cast wasn’t entirely made up out of people with issues. It was exactly what the cast needed here for variety.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 10

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Okay, so my post about Stein’s Gate 09 was a complete disaster. I had problems with the episode but blamed them on something completely stupid and irrelevant. I still hold that Daru needs to shut up, though, but more on that below.

First of all I want to say that before watching this episode, I got intrigued by a message of PL on the shoutbox, where he (she?) claimed that “Suspension of belief cracked”. With that, I assume that that referred to the scene in which Okarin assaulted Rukako. And yeah… that was out of place. If everything around Okabe changed, wouldn’t it at least have crossed his mind that the thing they tried to change in the first place? I mean, it’s a ridiculous scenario, but when the entire area I lived in changed dramatically, I’d at least consider buying flying pigs.

In a way, the more realistic a show is, the more these small inconsistencies tend to stand out. That’s what makes these kinds of series tricky to do, but that does make them really interesting. This episode may indeed not have been the best of the series so far, but I still really liked the turns that the plot took in the end.

In any case, let me try to actually explain exactly what has been bugging me about this series. It’s got nothing to do with plotholes or cliches that may or may not be there; that kind of suspense of disbelief is just the effect it has. Instead this is about storytelling versus characters. Steins;Gate is brilliantly told. It’s a pity that it chose the same season to air in as Hyouge Mono so that it can’t exactly boast the best dialogue of the season, but the camera work, pacing and atmosphere: I’ve said plenty of times that they’re amazing.

When looking at the characters though, I’m missing something. I keep praising other shows this season for adding to their cast, and giving their characters more depth by developing them, but I can’t really do that with this series. In fact, this episode finally took an in-depth look at one of the characters: SuzUha. With this episode her character finally changed, or at least our perception of this. In the meantime: all we know about Okabe is that he once got sick in the past. Mayuri meanwhile has a sad past that caused her to remain with Okabe, Daru meanwhile is a typical Otaku and it feels like all Christina has been doing is either be quiet or act tsundere.

Instead this show has been fleshing out its characters, and that’s another thing that it can be really good at. As much as I dislike Daru, I really like how he in this episode went out to a meeting of various members of a forum. The times that the characters spend shopping and doing the laundry are also quite cute. But at the same time they feel repetitive. Especially Okarin, Daru and Christina are guilty of this. Okabe’s monologues were once fresh, but after ten episodes they sound too much like each other. Daru was better in this episode, but generally he feels very repetitive whenever he’s not involved in the plot (I also realized that he’s voiced by Tomokazu Seki, and oh my god: he’s really forcing his voice here, making the acting of this guy just bad).

In short: too many characters are just repeating themselves too much. They mostly tend to shine whenever the plot is involved, but that’s because the plot is so incredibly good, not because the characters themselves are enjoyable to watch (or not as much as I’d like anyway).

The big question is of course: is this intentional? With 24 episodes, this could just be a form of build-up. The characters right now are slightly annoying because the creators are building them up, to give them some good depth in the second half. This has been done quite a few times, but there also have been plenty of shows who didn’t. The repetition in the banter right now however is something that’s irking me.

And why did I get a deja vu when I just wrote that?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hana-Saku Iroha – 10

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha



Yeah. This was good. This was really, really good. It was definitely the best episode since the first two episodes. I’ve always wanted to see an episode that just follows the every day lives of these characters without these hi-jinks like set-ups, and this was it. Sure, Ohana had to get sick for it, but what follows is a wonderfully down to earth episode in which for once the cast really came to life. it’s a very mundane episode, but because of that the creators were able to show a lot.

It’s a bit ironic that the episode with the most mundane premise so far has turned out to be the best one, but this has to do with the essence of why I didn’t enjoy Hana-Saku Iroha as much as I hoped I would. It’s not the fact that it became less serious, but rather that the scenarios for each episode felt… uninspired. Of course I don’t mean totally uninspired, but I did feel like I was missing something. They were fine as build-up, but in terms of the characterization they missed this thing that this episode had: their ability to really breathe life into these characters.

This episode was genuine as hell. The acting was wonderful, for just about everyone. The sick Ohana was wonderfully performed and the creators really went out of their way to portray her overly serious attitude while being sick. The chemistry between the cast really returned back to what it was in the first two episodes. Tohru also ended up showing much more of his crush on Ohana beyond the occasional chuckle as well, especially that scene in which he brings her dinner was really well done.

And you know what the irony is? This episode was written by Junji Nishimura, the director of True Tears. It shows.

Heck, it was storyboarded by the the director of Armed Librarians and directed by the co-director of GTO. Talk about a dream team here…
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Tiger & Bunny – 10

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



The good thing: Barnaby can finally remember the face of his parents’ killer after seeing a picture of him. The bad: this happened right before some of his comrades execute a city-wide plan to bust this guy out of jail. It ties in with the big flaw of this show: its coincidences; they just keep happening over and over.

In any case though, with this episode we seem to be heading into the meat of this series now that Ouroboros has finally showed itself. But even there I doubt that the entire second half of this show will be about Ouroboros: there is still Lunatic of course, but also tons of different side-plots that can work out really nicely if given an episode or two.

This episode was a step back from the previous episodes though. It lacked personality. It may have introduced new characters, but as for the older cast, it didn’t really show anything new about them aside from a short compilation of what they do in their time off. That part was very good, by the way. Compilations like that work especially well in action-packed series with large casts like this one.
Rating: * (Good)

Deadman Wonderland – 08

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



As much as I like this show, it does have its share of plotholes: Ganta hasn’t been eating any candy lately, has he? In fact, how do all these death row inmates rake up enough cash to buy these candies? Or are you immune to the poison they inject with the branches of sin? With these kinds of plotholes it’s always the context determines whether they’re an eyesore or a minor annoyance, and with Deadman Wonderland it has been the latter so far. There’s just so much else that makes up for it.

This episode was quiet for this series’ standards, but it did take advantage of that buy fleshing out the different characters. Shiro is back, she got some quality time together with Ganta, the priest got interesting, the resistance got some depth. And holy crap the ending of this episode contained some disturbing gore. This isn’t a matter of just showing a little blood: the way that the acid ate away that guy’s skin and muscles. Usually at those points, you see the camera pan away to not show the bloodiest parts. This show didn’t. The animation of this series can really be divided into two categories: really unimpressive, or really good.

This episode was laid back, but at the same time it didn’t destroy the mood that has been built up by the previous episode. Especially because it just kept dropping hints at all hell breaking loose in the next episode. They were surprisingly subtle for this series, but it just kept giving hints that many people are going to die horribly next week.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ao no Exorcist – 08

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist



So while the action in this series may not be the best of this season, it still was very good in this episode. It’s a simple show, it does suffer from the “let’s all talk casually while we’re in the middle of a fight”-syndrome, and the cast is full of hot headed characters, but they have really developed some charms at this point. That’s what made this episode work, although the animation did get quite good near the end of this episode. Especially that ghoul was well animated.

Also, it might actually help for the entire cast to be full of hotheads: this way Rin doesn’t have to be the only one there, and can actually show off a bit more of himself. This episode probably showed him at his most versatile we’ve seen him so far thanks to that girl having issues.

The evil teacher should probably be the first spice to get the story going again. I’m especially intrigued as why he found it a good idea to: 1) Showing his face to Rin and 2) Afterwards finding it a good idea to just casually pop up next to Yukio. One criticism would be that this show lacks variety: we pretty much have three characters with the exact same goals: kill a demon who slaughtered some family members. I mean, it’s much better than just wanting to be the best and all, but they could have at least done something to not make their back-stories exactly the same?

Also, what is up with that hood guy? Has he actually done… anything at this point? I mean, he’s just there. He sits, but never talks or even acts.Comparing him to an elephant in the room is a bit much of course, but it’s still really weird that after eight episodes, he has done absolutely nothing.
Rating: ** (Excellent)