Moshidora – 03

by psgels, posted in Spring 2011 Kaleidoscope



Ooh, Moshidora, what are you doing to me? As if I wasn’t busy enough already…

On a serious note though: we really need more of these kinds of series, who don’t care about airing weekly for 13 or 26 weeks, and instead just create their own schedule. The big problem with anime in general is that it’s just so damn inflexible, and it’s the series like this and Supernatural that really show that there are many different ways to release your series.

Moshidora overall impressed me, because of how much time it spent taking an in-depth look at the baseball team in question. With just three episodes, and Druker’s book was used well in order to help understand these players and get them to perform better. This episode continues on that trend, and takes a look at motivation, introducing a competitive element in the training. They’re all quite nice ideas here. I also like that for once, we get to take a look at a baseball team that isn’t fully committed, and where making a mistake is more the norm than the exception.

This series’ biggest problem is its cheese. Whenever this show gets too dramatic, it just loses my suspense of disbelief because it just overexaggerates things too much, and the acting just isn’t good enough to make these scenes believable. This episode spend a lot of time on this one guy who kept ditching trainings because of a mistake he made. That on its own is very believable: I’ve had this many times myself with my Karate practices. But when he angsted he acted just like his dog died. The way he reacts just isn’t believable. The cheesy violin background music did not help.

Also, what was up with that ending of this episode?
Rating: * (Good)

Steins;Gate – 04

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Unlike a lot of other series, Steins;Gate has this great combination between plot development and random goofing off. Here you have characters doing the laundry at one time, but you’ll never know when they’ll start talking about the plot again. It’s also a very good thing that the dialogue is really well written here: Hououin is getting more enjoyable with every passing episode.

On top of that, I love also these neat little details that this series keeps throwing in. Take for example that apron that the electronics store owns, which says “I Heart CRT”. A quick look into Wikipedia learned that that CRT stands for Cathode Ray Tube”, or the thing that non plasma TVs used in order to display their images. They’re these neat details that seem random at first, yet somehow strangely fitting once you think about it. The laundry for example seems random at first, but 1) it shows that the lead characters are humans as well because their clothes get dirty, and 2) it gives Christina an excuse to bump into them again.

Overall, What really sets Steins;Gate apart from Chaos;Head at this point is its characterization: in Steins;Gate they feel alive and dynamic. In Chaos;Head, they were just plot devices. It perhaps doesn’t have the most exciting or heartwarming start, but I really consider it as one of the four most solid series of the season. (The other three are Anohana, Hyouge Mono and Tiger & Bunny for those who are curious).

My one point of criticism: the creators had better have a good reason for Mayuri’s dead [whatever]. Death in a series can be a powerful thing, but don’t go killing off people for the sake of giving your characters a sad back-story.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Moshidora

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Moshidora

Short Synopsis: Our lead character enlists as the local school baseball team manager.
Here’s the weird thing about Moshidora, besides its premise: most series try to stand out with their first episodes. They really try to catch the audience’s attention. Moshidora doesn’t do that in the slightest. This episode was mundane, the budget was the minimum of what would be tolerable, and there are no attempts made to make the setting seem any more exciting than it already is. It’s clear that this show has hardly any production values and there are a lot of still frames all around For the most part of this episode I just kept wondering whether anything was actually going to happen. And yet, this series is definitely not bad. This show knows how to write characters, it knows how to stay away from making them pure stereotypes, and despite being slow-paced, it’s not wasting time either. This first episode explored the different characters, it took a look at the baseball club’s history, and it introduced the principles of Drucker’s management book neatly. These characters are not bad, and I’d much rather see Trans Arts put focus on their writing insttead of their animation.
OP: Quite dull
Potential: 60%

Hana-Saku Iroha – 04

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha



This remains annoying: the transfer student introduces him or herself to a classroom and the first thing that every single guy does is annoyingly talk about the cutest girl in school who of course happens to be one of the important characters. It has really gotten old ages ago, and yet anime just keeps pulling it. I mean, I have nothing against there being the cutest girl in school and all, but whenever she’s around, every single guy in school just gets reduced to this annoying fanboy who does nothing other than secretly stalk admire her. Nothing else! It’s a good thing that this show doesn’t have a male lead because that would really have been terrible (you know, the main character being the only one oblivious to her charms and all…).

In any case, this episode showed the introduction of the main character to the local school, so it wasn’t as good as the first two episodes because it dealt with a lot of introductions and stuff that unfortunately appears in a lot of other series. In terms of setting up things, it did its job well though. we’ve got a nice romance around Minko, Ohana’s feelings about her “boyfriend” get developed a bit and Nako also got a bit of her past revealed. It’s definitely not a wasted episode.

The most important thing though: after the previous episode, my biggest fear was that this show would abandon the first two episodes and continue on with these silly stories onward. Thankfully that didn’t turn out to be the case. In that case it was good for a bit of variety.
Rating: * (Good)

Ao no Exorcist – 02

by psgels, posted in Ao no Exorcist



Yeah, if there was any doubt left after the first episode, this episode took all of that away: this really is the shounen epic of the season. Whereas the previous prime time series (Star Driver and Sengoku Basara) tried to combine action with another genre (medieval politics and mystery/character study respectively), this is pretty much an all out action series about a boy who happens to be Satan’s Son. It really is the classic shounen formula, but it remains a very good rendition of it.

The set-up is not the best of this season by a long shot, but the execution and characters make up for it really well. This episode was an action-packed thrill ride, but the animation and art got really creepy near the end. The priest getting possessed by Satan was the highlight of the episode, but the other action scenes also kicked ass.

So far, the lead character is your typical shounen protagonist, but he has both his good points and his bad points. He can get rather annoying when he just stands there yelling, but whenever he isn’t he’s quite level headed and I liked how bluntly he just said that he’d become an Exorcist. In any case he still has enough room to grow. The side characters so far are diverse and interesting as well. The villains meanwhile do a good job of being a threat, although they are rather stereotypical, but let’s see where this series goes with them.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Tiger & Bunny – 04

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



Yesterday I was asked about reconstructions by Deedee. Back then I couldn’t really think of a good example that I really liked of one, but as I watched this episode of Tiger & Bunny I realized that it’s actually a pretty good example of a deconstruction. It accepts the flaws of the superhero genre, and then proceeds to create a highly creative setting around this flawed concept that both celebrates it and criticizes it. Of course it makes no sense for the heroes to be able to always be at the right place at the right time, but this series happily plays with that idea and has fun with it.

Also, apparently Tiger & Bunny will be 24 to 26 episodes long. I’ve yet to find official confirmation of this, but if this is true then it’d be awesome. This would really allow the creators to flesh out this setting of theirs, and this episode showed that they have every intention to do so. We finally get to see some background on one of the other heroes: the ice girl. My guess is that the other side characters will also get their own episodes. I also like that finally the most stereotypical character also became a bit more than a walking tramp. It’s a nice addition to see him own his own company, making him constrained by a whole number of different rules.

In the meantime, the action scenes still are fun to watch. They’re varied, and I like how they always involve multiple and different combinations of superheroes to make them fresh. The banter between the characters in-between the scenes especially is fun, and what the characters say are more than just cheesy one-liners.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Deadman Wonderland – 02

by psgels, posted in Deadman Wonderland



This show is crazy. It’s complete purgatory. The creators here take a boy, give him convenient excuses not to die and then proceed to torment him completely, while also making sure that he doesn’t get insane. This is like taking candy from a little kid, only to repeatedly kick it in the groin afterwards.

The convicts are pretty much labelled as criminals and this gives the creators the excuse to pretty much toy with their lives, like a very persistent sadistic cat. This episode was just completely brutal: here the prison simply sends about sixty people on a obstacle course, and how many of them survive it? Five? And heck, if that wasn’t enough, convicts have to gather an ungodly amount of money every three days in order to be able to survive. If you just win one such race, then you’re only safe for three days. How many convicts are there in Deadman Wonderland anyway, for them to be able to kill off everyone so indiscriminately? Based on these rules you’d figure that 95% of the convicts just dies off in just three days.

So yeah, the balls of the storyline is the main reason I’m blogging this series. Sadistic prisons have been done before, but not this crazy. It doesn’t even matter that it doesn’t touch upon prison rape (at least not beyond threats), because there is more than enough wrong with this setting as it is. This kind of openly endorsed bloodbath.

And yet, this is a series in which a fourteen year old kid can knock out a former taekwondo Olympic medallist with a mere plastic ball. That’s one of the two main problems with this series: the creators needed to do something in order to prevent the main character to just die off after five minutes. Even IF he is special, he’s also weak, and yet some of the things he does are just meant to give the writers the excuse to remain on track. This total lack of build-up of suspense of disbelief is one of the two major pitfalls for this series.

The second pitfall? The length. Seriously, this needs a second season to really work.

As for Manglobe, I’m afraid to say that the animation still doesn’t live up to their usual standards. The animation is decent, but nothing like the standards they set for themselves, with a lot of still frames, uninspired character designs (for their standards of course) and the voice acting also could be better. It’s a show that can go anywhere at this point, sand I’m interested in where it’ll end up at.
Rating: * (Good)

X-Men – 04

by psgels, posted in X-Men




This episode had two action scenes. And BY GOD where they excellent! This episode had a number of some people from the animation team of Birdy the Mighty Decode on it, and it really showed. The X-Men is a perfect series for these people to show their talents. These scenes were raw and brutal, and drawn with a ton of force and movement. Definitely the best action scenes of this series yet.

The last episode left me rather disappointed by that “fluids”-guy, but at the very least this episode really gave him a great action scene to close off. But Wolverine’s aerial fight against that flying mutant was awesome as well. More episodes like this, please!

As for the story, that also was quite neatly developed further, when Emma Frost of all people turned out to have a second mutation. The creators made good use of the fact that that one bad guy didn’t show himself in keeping the suspicions around her. These mutants with this second mutation are at the moment far more interesting than the U-Men, but let’s see what this series can do when it starts to develop these people in its second half.

Oh, and I also cracked up at Wolverine playing snooker.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Gosick – 14

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Aah, this arc is actually going to take up three episodes? Really, this could have easily been done in two! Alas, against my hopes Gosick didn’t completely ditch its lesser arcs for its second half. Such a shame.

It’s not like this arc is bad, but the main side character that it’s based around is just completely hopeless. The story of leviathan is quite interesting, and it’s good to finally see a bit more about the red haired guy who mostly likely will end up as the main villain, and yet most of this episode was about this really annoying love triangle that has no chance of working. Cecile does not belong in the spotlights. This arc did not give her any depth, it just shoehorned her into an even more cliched role as a hopeless love interest who is just there to stir up some tension between the lead couple. and the irony is that Kujou and Victorique never really needed this anyway: there’s enough tension between them already. They’re perfectly capable of developing themselves.

I noted previously that Gosick sucks in terms of telling its random stories. Leviathan really could have been the example to that rule, if this episode actually focused on him. The parts of this episode that focused on his story were actually quite good, but Cecile just took up way too much airtime in this episode. She dragged this arc out to three episodes for no reason whatsoever other than filling up 24 episodes.

This series is yet another one of those examples where it’s a shame that there can’t be 18-episoded series. Gosick is too long for 13 episodes and too short for 24. The result? A lot of pointless episodes and padding. Get back to the point you’re trying to make, dammit!
Rating: – (Disappointing)

A-Channel – 03

by psgels, posted in Spring 2011 Kaleidoscope



I know that I praised this series and all, but as I watched the second episode of A-Channel something dawned on me: this series is really formulaic, isn’t it? This was less prevalent in this third episode, but still it stands out.

I’m not talking about formulaic in terms of cliches. These are actually fine in this series, especially compared to the other series of this season. Instead, the scenes in this series nearly always follow the same pattern:
– First there is a bit of a build-up: characters do something normally.
– A character then does something weird, random or strange.
– A straight man then makes a startled reaction.

And mind you, these scenes are often less than a minute long, and this same pattern just repeats over and over. The girls do alternate between acting as the straight man and the one making the joke, but most of the time they have fixed roles in these jokes. Especially in the second episode.

This is a very nasty flaw, and yet this was one of the few moe shows this season that did not bore me out of my skull. Sure, the second episode was bad, but this third episode actually started to mix things up a bit, and contained some actual good jokes along the way, something that a lot of other generic moe shows this season lacked.

It’s nothing amazing, but my best guess at what makes this series tick is that it has good characters. Looking back to the joke format above: that format may be bad, but the build-up is actually fleshing these characters out pretty nicely. The jokes themselves meanwhile, even when they fail, do not turn these characters into generic stereotypes, or force them into these contrived situations, but instead they play with their quirks.

There are some bad examples though, at which this show forgets this. This episode for example contained a really strange insert-song that was just there to fill up time, and the sole salvation of that school doctor was his shock factor, which will die out in a few episodes now. There are also times at which the characters just fall too much into their own roles, but thankfully moments like these are made up for by other scenes that do something completely different with the character in question.

That variety will probably be key in keeping this series fresh. This episode was a good example of that, because it did a good job of shuffling its scenes around, showing a lot of different aspects of high school life. Currently it’s probably at the bare minimum of not being annoying. It’s obviously nothing amazing like Hana-Saku Iroha or Anohana, but it suffices for now as something laid-back to watch.
Rating: (Enjoyable)