Hana-Saku Iroha – 09

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha



Okay, so with this episode it’s clear: Hana-Saku Iroha is building up to a love polygon: we have this new girl who likes Kou, while Ohana and Kou still don’t know whether they actually like each other, and while Tohru is likely to start hitting on Ohana anytime soon now, with Minko still having her crush on Tohru. The only one who misses at this point is Nako and the entire picture will be complete.

I’m not the biggest fan of love polygons, as they tend to be really annoying, but at the very least this series is aware of that and therefore is building up things carefully. Plus, if the rest of the episodes will be as interesting as this past arc, then it’ll still be a very interesting series.

It’s a nice and stressful episode for Ohana, and I liked how this past arc created its drama, even though it was a collection of coincidences strangely happening all at the same time. This episode however took that idea and rolled with it, resulting in quite a bit of character development and new sides of characters that we hadn’t seen before. Overall, these were the best episodes of Hana-Saku Iroha since the first two episodes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Tiger & Bunny – 09

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



This show is a delight to watch, even when Lunatic goes on a holiday. Instead, this episode was about the Dragon Kid and like all of the previous that were meant to highlight a particular character, it gave a complete new meaning to her.

what’s more though: even in those episodes, the series continues to build the bond between the important characters, even when they’re not the focus. This episode was also about Kotetsu and his daughter, Barnaby becoming more open about his trauma. This was all made possible by a seemingly silly story at first: taking care of a baby. Because of it though, we even got to see the producer woman being put into a situation that would have been impossible to film (the son of the major getting kidnapped would be… really hard to explain), reducing her to a simple assistant, rather than someone who always gives out orders. All of that was really refreshing. This really was an episode where characters could relate to each other.

The only pity is that the main villains this time only played such a small role. Girls with those abilities deserve to be more than just child kidnappers. I know that it makes perfect sense for the three of them to team up, but they could have been featured in a story that took a bit more advantage of their abilities. Right now they were held back by the one major flaw in storytelling of this series: the way that the main characters are criminal magnets. I know that this series does this to prove its point about superheroes and all, but in this case it prevented a bunch of potentially awesome villains to shine even more.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Deadman Wonderland – 07

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



It’s still a bit strange to have someone claim that she lost a stomach and all, but I liked this episode a lot again. For the first time it actually brought in a bit of hope. People started to treat Ganta kindly, and for once he wasn’t alone. It will be interesting to see how this series will develop this.

Beyond that, this was an episode of backgrounds as well: there were a lot of flashbacks or characters telling about their pasts and when or why they ended up at the Deadman Wonderland, tying in neatly with the ED. I didn’t like the ED for this series at first, and I still think that Nirgilis did a much better job on Birdy the Mighty and Eureka7, but it’s actually quite interesting to see images of the past of the cast.

I’m not sure what’s up with the priest in this episode. He’s weird in any case, and while he may not be as bad as the Olympic medallist, he still needs a lot of work at this point. Still, this series has a habit of only explaining motives after someone does something strange, so this should be fine. In the end I’m getting more worried about what was originally meant to be the biggest potential pitfall for this series: the length!

The thing with Manglobe is that there is no pattern whatsoever in how their sequels. Their original stories always get the right amount of episodes they deserve, but in terms of their adaptations: Sarai-Ya Goyou condensed the final chapters of its manga so that it could fit everything in. The World God Only Knows came with a sequel that was actually planned in advance, while Seiken no Blacksmith just ended with no intention to fully animate its story. It can be anything at this point, but as great as these past episodes were, episode 12 will be a very bad point to end this series.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

X-Men – 08

by psgels, posted in X-Men




Here’s the thing: after eight episodes, I can pretty much say that X-Men has the best animation of the season. Sure, some of the slice of life series may have more fluidity, but they also are a lot easier to animate and keep consistent. The animation with the X-Men is wild, vivid, colourful and very diverse. C has this too, but at the same time it does have a lot of off-model shots and CG. Tiger & Bunny meanwhile also has the CG working against its otherwise great eye candy. Ao no Exorcist is animated consistently meanwhile, but it instead just looks too mundane too often. The X-Men, while it may not be amongst the Madhouse series with the best visuals, still stands apart with its consistently interesting visuals and excellent character designs. This episode again looked excellent. Perhaps only Nichijou has better animation, but I have seen too little of that to really say something about that.

Overall this turned out to be quite a solid action series: the action kicks ass and appears often, there is intrigue, the characters all have their issues that blend together quit nicely. It’s only the storyline that I’m not yet convinced of: at this point it still feels a bit too random and unconnected. What was the purpose of the U-Men beyond just kidnapping a bunch of people? They really could have used that time to focus more on the characters and real villains.

Apart from that, this episode was really meant to build intrigue, and I’m curious to see whether that will pay off or not. A lot of the series this season are very big on the build up, and most of them are doing a great job on that, though X-Men still feels a bit iffy here. I’ve said before that the main villains here are uninteresting. Wolverine’s ending worked so well because it had a really charismatic villain. What X-Men meanwhile needs to do is build a finale around Sasaki and Xavier on one hand, and Cyclops and Emma Frost on the other hand. It will be much more difficult than just “have battle to defeat the big bad”, although that part definitely must not be half-assed either.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Gosick – 19

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Um. Wow. This might just as well have been the best episode of Gosick yet. This past month has just been absolutely amazing for this series, there’s no way around it. The bad stories? All gone. The annoying characters? Who cares about those? Heck, every episode this month has delivered beyond what I could have ever expected from this series.

Cordelia’s background… holy crap. To think that in the past half year, there have been two series that feature main characters that were pretty much the products of outright rape (for obvious spoiler reasons I’m not going to mention what the other series was, but those who saw it know what I’m talking about). This episode really gave some insights at who Cordellia was, as well as completely prove me wrong in thinking that the red haired guy was supposed to be a villain.

I also love that how in hindsight, the series has been dropping hints and references to this episode over and over. Unfortunately this can’t be said of every arc: the pointless arcs still remain pointless at this point, but the good arcs are surprisingly well tied to each other. And heck, this past month has really made up for the bad arcs of this series. Gosick has turned from a cheap mystery show to an amazingly engaging adventure series. It’s not just Victorique who is awesome: it’s the bond between every character here that just gets better and better.

The only part I did not like about this episode: Bones didn’t have the budget to really animate that dance scene of Cordellia. That’s a bit of a pity.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-Tachi wa Mada Shiranai. – 07

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



This probably is the moe-est show that I’ve ever considered as my favourite of a season. I mean, I have enjoyed teenaged drama romances before and all, but not to the point where they were done this well in such a short time. More than any other series this season, this series really nails the feelings of its lead characters and it continues to push their relationships forward. This episode was slightly special, though: for once it focused especially on Jinta and Menma.

Instead, I can only see this episode as a build-up red herring. That’s nothing bad, by the way. Some of my favourite stories use these red herrings. Rather than pointless, I love it when done well, they are excellent in fleshing out the characters and story, and the same pretty much happened here: the whole rocket story has nothing to do with Menma’s wish and all, but this episode really stressed the bond and the memories that the main characters made with each other.

By the way, it’s great that Noitamina has been pretty much consistently amazing for the past five seasons here: for the past five seasons and eight series since the timeslot turned into an hour long, there pretty much has been an amazingly well written series on, with the best still being Spring 2010. 2010 was overall a mediocre year, but THAT was the best season that Noitamina ever had). Heck, pretty much the only mistake during this period was Fractale. As for Anohana, I’d probably put it somewhere in the bottom of the top 8 of my favourite Noitamina series. Where exactly entirely depends on the ending.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

[C] The Money of Soul and Possibility Control – 07

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



Ah, this episode was exactly what this series needed. This was an episode to look back. It took a break from the different battles, and instead gave two characters the chance to play as the narrator, in order to tell a bit more about themselves. In case of Mikuni, it’s about his past, and in case of Mashu it’s about her feelings. It’s a good chance to take a bit of a step back and focus on these characters in order to solidify the finale of this series, and this episode did that wonderfully. Oh, and it was also a really nice touch to suddenly revisit a past character who seemed like nothing but cannon fodder t the time.

I only have a few minor complaints about this episode. The animation for example wasn’t really up to par, even for this series’ standards. I really wonder what this series would have looked like if the earthquake hadn’t happened, and because of that I do have to admit that despite the creative images, Mononoke, Trapeze and Bake Neko have this one trumped in terms of visuals.

As for the individual stories, the thing with C is that none of its episodes so far have been as bad as the worst episodes of Trapeze, nor have they been as good as the best episodes of Trapeze. In terms of the overall story and characters though, C has definitely been better. Of course, Trapeze did tie itself up really nicely in its final episode, but at this pacing, this series can be able to do the same, only with a much better storyline and characters. At the same time though, the direction will never be as good as it was in Mononoke or Bake Neko. It just lacks the energy, force and timing to really draw you in with its pacing.
Bake Neko was pretty much the perfect short story, and ever since I never saw something of Kenji Nakamura that was good as that one. But his shows have always been very interesting to watch.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hyouge Mono – 08

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



This show really knows when it needs to be funny and when it needs to be serious here, often combining the two really well. That falcon scene for example was hysterical, but also the start of this episode was just awesome in the way in which it turned into a political bluff-match where Sasuke had to take care of the food for important guests. The pineapple already was nicely used in the previous episode, but this episode really took advantage of these cultural differences.

Beyond that, this also had a lot of build-up, but it was much better done than in the previous episode. The acting brought the characters alive here, even when they were just talking to each other: it wasn’t as emotionless as it was an episode ago. And yet at the same time, while this series is completely different from anything that Bee-Train has ever made before, there is one thing that makes this series perfect for them, and they took advantage of this really well: the conversations, and the use of pauses there. I’m not sure whether the manga had this too, but the timing of this series is impeccable. It’s a hate or love technique of course, but I love how these silences also speak huge parts about what these characters are trying to say to each other, non-verbally.

The animation for this series has been… interesting. I mean, it’s not like this series is consistent, but the key scenes are drawn really well, and actually are very well animated. The characters may not move around the screen much, but when they do move it’s slow, yet surprisingly smooth, and these scenes really manage to stand out.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Showa Monogatari – 07

by psgels, posted in Showa Monogatari



I still think that the EDs for this series are a very nice touch: showing a different classic song from those days really makes this series even more authentic than it already was. It’s one of the few EDs this season that actually tries to add something to its series.

In any case, I really liked this episode. Half of it was about Kouhei, and the other half about Yuuko. Kouhei surprisingly had his best episode so far, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that he wasn’t alone in this episode: his part was about his entire baseball team. The story about bullying was surprisingly well done here, and it was worth seeing all those kids together. As a group, these kids really are a great character here.

Also, it was a nice touch to show an earthquake there. I suspect that this series was talking about the 1964 Niigata Earthquake, of a magnitude of 7.5. Yet again: it’s impressive to see how well the creators are trying to make this series blend in with the actual history, not to mention that it also was a nice touch to show all this through the eyes of a child, who couldn’t grasp the consequences of such a thing yet.

The next two weeks meanwhile will be the remaining two preview episodes, and with this episode everything nicely falls into place. First of all, this episode really shows the events that lead up to Yuuko’s date going wrong. Also, the fact that within two episodes we’re going to skip to the summer holidays really point to the fact that the creators are intending the 1964 Olympics as the finale of this series. A great idea. It’s especially going to be good for Kouhei’s brother: his storyline can’t be wrapped up that quickly, and something tells me that the creators were intending to put more of Yuuko in the first half, and more of him in the second half of this series.

Also, this episode had a slightly different animation style than usual. The drawings were messier, but at the same time there was more movement and the camera angles were much better than usual. I’ve always found that movement and details have a higher priority than consistency, so this is a change that I liked quite a bit. Ideally you’d of course want animation to both have a lot of movement and be crisp at the same time, but Wao World unfortunately doesn’t have the best animators.

On a side-note: that pool! It’s hard to imagine, but were pools in those days always that filthy?
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 08

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Oh god. Not the cliff-hangers again?! The end of this episode promises many frustrating weeks of waiting what’s going to happen next. Seriously, the end of this episode made me really hungry to see what happens next.

I loved this episode. It was pretty much nothing but Okarin experimenting with making simple changes to the past, some of which failed and some of which succeeded. The ones that did succeed kept taking things a bit further, though, all in ways that seem pretty strange at first. Why did a simple message to change cell phones prevent that cell phone woman to join Okarin? Or did she change something else and just didn’t show it to people? Also, the idea of using pagers to send messages seventeen years back into the past, on something as vague changing genders.

Also, eight episodes in, and I have to say that I really like the cast. Sure, they have their annoying moments,but they’re very well balanced together, filling in for each others’ flaws. I’m usually not into characters doing random things unless I find the characters interesting, and that’s exactly the case here: even when they’re just shopping for bread, I’m interesting in what these characters are doing. This episode in particular just kept juggling its characters around, showing a bit of all of them.

There’s one thing that just keeps catching my attention though, and that especially stands out while making screenshots: this is one series that doesn’t care about consistency in its drawings. In fact, the entire season is full of distorted faces. Especially in the post-quake era it just shows how difficult it is to consistently make the faces of your characters expressive and believable. The shows that do this the best out of this spring season are Hyouge Mono and Ano Hana, by the way.
Rating: ** (Excellent)