Gosick – 22

by psgels, posted in Gosick



When I first saw that Inspector de Blois guy, and I really thought that he would be just this silly side-character. Especially the way in which he behaved in the first half of this series. But whoa: he’s actually become a great villain here. This episode just showed that he resents Victorique quite a bit

In any case, the creators chose a fitting backdrop for the finale of this series: the legend behind it is fully devoted to the bond between Kujou and Victorique, playing with the prophecy from that old guy, plus the stakes here are the involvement in the second world war. It’s good, epic and not too mundane for the sake of epicness, so it’s definitely a good start for the finale of this series.

I also liked the quiet bits in this episode. Christmases in anime tend to look a lot like each other, so it’s interesting to see all kinds of new rituals and traditions here. The dress-up party was especially nice because for once everyone just forgot their prejudice to Kujou and Victorique. It’s more symbolic than that it actually makes sense, but it’s definitely a nice touch.

Overall, I really like adventure series, and Gosick’s second half really fueled that interest for the past season. As a series overall it definitely has its problems, though. The second half introduced wondrous stories, interesting legends and all sorts of interesting ideas and places. In the first half, there were only two arcs that did that too. The others were just uninspired. I can understand the characters taking their time to grow (but even there their stupidity’s absence would have made this series even better), but what was the reason of not using these episodes in the first half to experiment a bit? Tell imaginative and creative stories, rather than just waiting for the second half to arrive. In fact, most of the build-up was done by the two major arcs of the first half: the ship arc and the village arc. The others just fleshed out the cast, and that’s something that they could have done much better.

Overall though, against my expectations Gosick was worth it in the end. The wait was very much rewarded by these past arcs. The ending is probably not going to be the best part of this series, but I’m nevertheless intrigued in how far this series is willing to go.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hyouge Mono – 11

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



What the hell? Another new OP?

I could understand the first OP change, after the break up of the band who performed the first OP. The second OP was a pretty logical choice seeing the time constraints. The third OP though… is just pure madness. It’s like the creators went “ah, we’re doing these random songs anyway, so we might as well roll with it”. The new song is just completely bizarre and random. Talking about something completely different. This really sounds like they let a cat walk over a keyboard and constructed a nice melody around it. And yet for some reason I like it a lot. It’s been a while since an OP this pleasantly surprised me.

Anyway, this episode continues with the aftermath of Oda Nobunaga. It’s clearly build-up, but it nevertheless retained that great atmosphere, and did a great job of getting everyone to prepare for the inevitable chaos and run for power that will ensue. Mitsuhide realizes that his position is very frail, and Sasuke meanwhile gets a new position offered by his brother. I couldn’t exactly pick up what he’s going to do because the dialogue is so freaking complex, but I understood enough that this could very well become the glory that he always hoped for.

Also, more wtf-news on this series: it just distanced itself from the manga it’s based on. What the hell? Wasn’t this supposed to be an incredibly accurate adaptation? From out of nowhere, the official site lists the manga author credited as “original scheme”, instead of “original story”. They refuse to say exactly why, so did they get into a fight or something? I mean, I can understand why Clamp got angry at them for Tsubasa Chronicle and all, but with such an accurate adaptation?

The weird question right now is of course: what’s going to happen to this series? Will it just continue adapting the manga like it has always had, or will it in a few episodes go into its own direction? It’s here where those 39 episodes really are going to be interesting, because it’s got plenty of time to resolve all of these issues. With Bee-Train, it’s definitely going to be interesting.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

[C] The Money of Soul and Possibility Control – 10

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



Yup, the ending is going to be really important for this one: how will this get solved? That’s the big question. That will be the biggest factor in whether this show will leave a bad taste or not. The thing is that Mikuni is not one of those stereotypical villains who are evil for the sake of being evil: he made the decision to drastically alter the country and tighten the grip of the Midas Money on Japan, because the alternative would be even worse. What can Kimimaro and the information broker offer to prevent bankruptcy?

If it hits the right marks however, then this will end up as a really good series. The interesting thing with C is that we were all obviously expecting the same directional style as with Mononoke and Kuchuu Buranko, and yet it was very different. And yet, the direction in this episode was once again really good. The use of music got even better than it already was, it kept changing and keeping things dynamic while at the same time keeping things together and developing its plot in one direction. This climax so far has been rushed, but not random, and yet it was packed with neat ideas worthy of a climax, rather than just let everything devolve into just “more power!” like anime often pull this.

I am still surprised that this show hasn’t self-destructed yet, though. Lately, I’ve gotten very sceptical of series that try to stuff too much in too little. Especially adaptations suffer from this (Togainu no Chi, Yumekui Merry, Kuragehime, Sengoku Basara, Durarara), but also original stories like Fractale and Sora no Oto tripped up pretty badly in their final stretch. Interestingly, the cause of this seems to generally be half-assed pacing: the shows misuse their time, plowing on slowly and forgetting to build up vital plot points, or suddenly force a huge increase of pacing when they suddenly realize that they need to end on something epic, ending up with too little time to actually pull that off. C doesn’t have that, or so far at least.

It will depend on the next episode to see whether the creators really knew what they were doing, but so far I can see the layout of this series: first it took its time to flesh out the world with its random cases, showing a different part of is concept with every episode, while it actually started in time gaining momentum for its finale.

I mean, this show has still flaws: there’s a lot of stuff that came out of bloody nowhere, and that lack of ability to explain this stuff is unfortunate due to the short length. That black card in particular came out of nowhere and while it’s understandable that that clown would have some sort of trick like that, it would have been nice to have seen that announced beforehand. This episode also again has Kimimaro winning against all odds and I’m still not sure how he exactly did it. This was a flaw that had it coming from the beginning, and unfortunately wasn’t avoid. But those action scenes looked damn cool though.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-Tachi wa Mada Shiranai. – 10

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



What a wonderful penultimate episode. Everything is just culminating to that final climax of this series. Once again, this episode was just full of emotions and it continued to push its characters forward.

It was clear that the fireworks arc was going to be an anti-climax: there was no way in which that really would be Menma’s wish, but damn: this episode nearly made me believe that ti was. The build-up to the eventual launch was really quite sad, especially with Jintan not wanting her to go away. Yet at the same time, his personality would never have made him actually stop the launch. Beyond that though, everyone was somehow deeply emotionally involved in the launch. The climax, now that Menma didn’t disappear, is looking out to be amazing.

Overall, I’m going to wait until next week before claiming whether or not this was my favourite show of the year. This season also has a lot of series that go past 13 episodes for once, so I also can’t say yet whether it’s going to be the best series of the season. But what I can say is that it has the best eleven episodes of the past season. It left no moment wasted, it always sought to give more depth to its characters and the characters always made sure for hard-hitting and confronting drama. It’s exactly the kind of story that belongs in Noitamina.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Steins;Gate – 11

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Looking back on this season, I really have to say that its big strength is storytelling: showing interesting stories, and deliver them well, ranging from the wonderful pacing of Ano Hana, the impeccable timing and dialogue of Hyouge Mono, the great ideas of Tiger & Bunny and C, the outrageous Deadman Wonderland and Kaiji, the action-packed X-Men, the really well detailed Hana-Saku Iroha, and of course Stein’s Gate with its excellent delivery of its plot twists and atmosphere.

This episode took a step away from this focus in order to focus on one of the main characters, Christina, and show her background. At least, or so I thought until Okabe got that phone message out of nowhere, followed by a very artistic and stunning piece of animation about him running back. Seriously. That was good. That’s how these artistic animation bits should be used: instead of random clutter they bring out even more out of the characters than what conventional animation would be able to do.

Really, the ideas of this series rock. It’s also the way it gradually became clear at the end that Cern (I still refuse to call it Sern) pretty much let themselves get hacked (probably using its data as bait in order to find out about the microwave). I also like how this show is being really vague on who exactly is from Cern, and whether or not that mysterious message sent to Okabe was from one of them. Also, did Okabe check the number where it came from? It didn’t look like it came from anyone he knew, or there must be characters in this show using multiple cell phones.

As for the annoying parts in this episode, I’m not going to list the “accidentally walking in the shower”-scene because it was well built up for once. It’s just about the most terrible twist you can pull right now, but at the very least I am glad that at least the creators put some meaning behind it as an anti-climax. Seriously, this is more than just about any other show that pulled this crap during the past number of years. Instead, what annoyed me about this episode was the point where the characters started talking in various internet memes I didn’t understand up to the pint where the dialogue became hard to follow due to all of the random rambling.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Shiki – 20,5

by psgels, posted in Shiki



This episode wrapped up the stories of some of the side characters of this series. None of the main characters made any appearance, and I can understand why it was cut for the sake of the TV-series’ main characters. Yet, it’s great to see this part animated and that the creators somehow managed to find a way to squeeze this in, because this episode once again was just amazing.

One of the strengths of Shiki was that it didn’t just make its main characters come alive: it did this with the whole village. It’s because of that that this episode worked so well; they even introduced a new central character whose context in the series only makes it even richer. With the Awesome Beard Guy out of the way, the squadron that hunts down the remaining Shiki all have their own way in which they go on their rampage.

On top of that, the blue haired Shiki also received an amazing end. It’s especially her development that works well here, especially considering how she used to be one of the major side villains in the first half of the series. She completely changed now that none of her family members ended up rising back up.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Showa Monogatari – 10

by psgels, posted in Showa Monogatari



And with this we’re finally done with the preview episodes, and it’s finally time for this series to wrap itself up. The big focus on this episode was Yuuko. My memory may be a bit fuzzy on this point, but I’m surprised that she still stuck with that guy after he failed to take her to that love hotel. It’s a major episode that shows her getting in trouble by stealing something from a store.

Seriously though: the drama in this series is really down to earth. First of all the big drama of this episode didn’t revolve around the world getting destroyed or somebody dying, but instead on someone stealing a record from the Beatles. This show actually succeeds in creating good drama from that, but what’s even better is that this episode also succeeded in delivering some good drama on something even more mundane: Kouhei’s father having a terrible day at work. Whereas the foreshadowing of Yuuko’s adventures could have been a bit more subtle, her father’s bad temper has been around the entire series and this episode showed really nicely the troubles he has controlling this, alongside raising a teenaged daughter at a difficult age and a son as he hit the bratty age.

Speaking of which: Kouhei was in the background again with his tasks mainly reduced as a narrator, foreshadowing for other characters and trying to draw his father for homework. This is where he fits best. The drama around him has by far been the least interesting of the entire series, so it’s always good to see the focus on the rest of the cast.

Also, it’s been five months since this show debuted, with only one episode subbed. With Hyouge Mono I can understand the delay: it is really complex to understand. But seriously: the dialogue in Showa Monogatari is not difficult and quite easy to understand.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Gintama – 212

by psgels, posted in Spring 2011 Kaleidoscope



Ideally, we’d want a list of exactly what kind of episodes of Gintama’s sequel are worth watching and which ones aren’t. It’s going to make this series much more accessible to the ones who can’t be bothered to sit through the bad episodes at this point. I myself am nudging more and more to that group. In any case, let me at least start for the first eleven episodes of the second season:

Skippable: Episodes 1-7
Worth watching: Episodes 8-11

The first eight episodes were random stories, where episodes 9 to 12 consist out of the Otose arc. This Otose arc is really recommended, more on that below. As for the random episodes, the only one that I can really recommend is the eighth one, in which the characters start toying with recap episodes again. Out of all of the running gags, that’s the one that still works at this point. I also wouldn’t really recommend the Catherine episode: that one was basically the creators screaming “Find this sad!” It didn’t even prepare for the Otose arc either.

In any case, I remember clearly that the first episode focusing on Otose (I believe it was episode eleven, so this goes way back) was the point where I first realized that the original series would be something special, and not just a focus on good laughs. Finally, 200 episodes later we see this story continued, and at the very least I’m glad to have stuck with this series at this point, because the added background to Otose was just excellent.

Oh, and Otose’s younger form was awesome. It usually works great when a younger version of a character is shown to illustrate how much he/she changed, but for an old lady this works even better. The story created around this was just great: it’s both tragic, yet unlike the Catherine episode it’s not just there for cheap cries. It adds a lot of new stuff to Otose’s character and it feels genuine for nearly all of the involved characters.

Now, I hardly ever edit posts aside from fixing typos, but with this one I’ll continue updating the above list for as long as I keep watching this series. I’ll probably drop this series some time around the beginning of the Summer season, due to how incredibly busy it’s looking out to be, so let me know when any new awesome episodes pop up from this series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hana-Saku Iroha – 11

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha



And with this, Hana-Saku Iroha stepped out of the shadow of its first two episodes. This episode once again was great, and full of emotions.

It was a bit random, but nevertheless a great way for Ohana to get back to her mother. Ending up writing a scathing review of the inn where both her daughter and mother work. The tension between her and Ohana in this episode was just amazing, and after that this series managed to make things even better by also involving Ko in the equation.

It was indeed a bit early for me to call her part of the love triangle, but at least I was right about her having a crush on Ko: the signs about her introduction were all there. What I didn’t expect however was for Ko to turn her down. That scene between him and Ohana at the Wac Donalds was some excellent romance: it played with the distance between the two and Ohana’s shyness, without making it a simple “will they won’t they?” This episode also rocked because the creators stuffed in a ton of those small details, like Ohana crumbling that piece of straw wrapper.

Overall, I know that I’ve been a bit harsh on this series while it still was building up. In the past I would have had the patience to indeed wait until it get the chance to show its true colours. However, 2010 unfortunately made me very sceptical of those kinds of series that promise to get better later on. It felt like half of the long shows failed to do that despite the huge luxury in episodes they received: Heroman, Nurarihyon, Arakawa Under the Bridge and Index II all failed to live up to their promise to get better. Then there are the series like Kaichou wa Maid Sama which despite the fact that I dropped them early on, I really doubt that they were able to redeem themselves. On top of that there were Durarara and Letter Bee Reverse, which both decreased in quality during their second halves and Star Driver, which promised to get better, only to remain pretty much consistent throughout its entire run. There was only a relatively small fraction of 22-26-episoded that started in 2010 that actually made good use of all of its build-up (Giant Killing, Rainbow, Denyuuden, Uragiri and Shiki).

That’s why I’m really glad that so many long series this season seem to head into the right direction, but as long as they don’t I unfortunately have to remain a bit (okay, very) sceptical.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Deadman Wonderland – 09

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



So this wasn’t meant to be the most surprising episode: right from the start it was clear that everything would go to hell in this episode, with a traitor right in the middle of everything, just about every part of the plan was set to be sabotaged and brutally murdered, which is exactly what happened.

And yeah, I guess that the way in which Ganta survived was pretty plausible. On top of being lucky enough to have the single most powerful character in the series as his ally, he also was the only child in this operation: it makes sense for the others to want to protect him, and at least make him end up outside. The whole explosion also made sure that the priest didn’t just go and murder him on the spot. Really, as long as things remain this way I have no problems with it. This show just needs to avoid pulling another Olympic medallist.

Also, the death scenes: they also were well done. The fact remains that Ganta went together with just a bunch of unnamed characters, but this episode made sure to at least give them a character as a group, and highlight some of their personalities even though we don’t know anything about them. I was actually surprised that some of them actually survived (but then again the question will be for how long? I really hope that this show won’t see them as just cannon fodder after this point).

Also, the gore. This episode did not have any particularly well animated scenes, but it’s here where the script and scenarios were enough for the disturbance factor.

In any case, Manglobe: in terms of the biggest flaw of anime (ending in the middle of the storyline), this season has been really generous: out of all of the series that are about to end, only Deadman Wonderland really need a continuation, since TWGOK at the very least just got an OVA announced. Incidentally, both are Manglobe series. The manga at the very least still seems to sell surprisingly well, but I stopped uselessly anticipating these unannounced sequels a long time ago. I’ve just seen too many awesome series that didn’t get their continuation.

At the very least though: Deadman Wonderland will not be a pointless series. This past season has had enough points that made it worth watching. That’s quite rare for the series of this length.
Rating: ** (Excellent)