[C] The Money of Soul and Possibility Control – 02

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



C is above all, a lot of fun to watch. It’s got an awesome premise, and makes awesome use of that. The action scenes are full of creativity and there is a ton of fast-paced intrigue that keeps this show going. The soundtrack is amazing (third best of the season after Hyouge Mono and Tiger & Bunny), and everything is pointing at the creators planning to make this as fun to watch as possible. Great!

At the same time though, it does have its weaknesses, and doesn’t try to hide it. I like that kind of honesty, at least. The main character did end up to be “the chosen one”: the complete rookie who with a very flimsy reason suddenly does things no other rookie has done before… aside from his big rival. (The rest of the episodes really need to un-flimsy that “asset” of him that allowed him to summon such a giant beam).

Also: 3D CG. It’s clear that the animators are ambitious, but don’t have the budget they need. They want a lot of movement, but they just can’t do everything at the same time, which leads to A TON of 3D CG. On actual characters. Whereas in Tiger & Bunny at least the models are consistent in either 2D or #D, here they really are all over the place, really convincing me of the budget problems. And yet, the scenes at which the animators did focus their attention… are absolutely gorgeous and amongst the best eye candy of the season. Take your pick.

Now, as for the characters: they’re not the best, but I like ’em. The male lead is more than your average male lead, despite his cliches, his female fighting companion is short and to the point, and has the potential to grow, and his rival is probably the most intriguing. They’re all likable, they have potential but need more depth to really work, though. Especially the main character; this episode was instead all about developing the premise. In terms of the really minor side characters though… that probably is the worst part of this series. That thug was just…. too much.

In any case, I’ve been asked what my favourite shows of this season are. I consider the big four to be Hyouge Mono, Anohana, Hana-Saku Iroha and Tiger & Bunny. Those really instantly captured me. After those come Steins;Gate, and C: two series that have all the ingredients to become amongst those other four, but just need a bit of extra time. Right now, the most important thing for C is to remain entertaining throughout its entire 11 episodes. If it manages that, then I’ll be happy, and I won’t mind the flaws at all. The key ingredients for that right now seem to be: more depth on the different characters, and a variety on the different episodes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-Tachi wa Mada Shiranai. – 02

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



A big season has a major advantage, but also a major disadvantage. The major advantage? There will be more great shows. This will only become more apparent as the season goes on, and right now there are already a ton of shows that are really good. The downside though… is that there also will be more bad shows. This season was no exception.

When I checked out Anohana’s first episode, I had nearly given up. Seriously, I haven’t dropped so many series in one season in a long while. There are just so many mediocre series in this season, let alone bad ones. Things like Hidan no Aria, Sofuteni and Hoshikaka, among many others, had these terribly annoying character. Seriously, what’s fun about them? And then there also were series as Sengoku Otome, which I guess didn’t have any harem stereotypes, but also did absolutely nothing to stand out.

Moe in Noitamina? I really had no faith. Mari Okada surely is an amazing writer, but there is no way that she’d be able to write three series at the same time. Again. Where two are completely original stories. The Fractale debacle of the previous season didn’t help either. And then I started to watch the first episode of Anohana. And indeed, it looked like all the others at first, with a guy and a girl having random fun. And then Naruko turned up, it became clear that Meiko was a ghost, and it just blew me away. It’s been ages since I watched such a heartwarming teenaged drama.

A ton of character development, already in the first episode, excellent animation, these characters are just amazing. They’re unlike the stereotypes you usually see: they feel like people. They have personalities, but aren’t completely dominated by them. They have their own stories, but also feel like characters beyond that. Take this episode for example: Naruko was pretty tsundere, but for once I wouldn’t blame her, considering what happened. And at the same time the tsundere wasn’t the only part of her character. It’s clear that all of these characters still have their feelings about their childhood days, but they all grew away in their own ways. This really turned out to be a wonderful story about people growing apart from each other, with some being left behind. Also, this episode really hit home as well when they started talking about Pokemon (or… Nokemon) which they played together. You usually see kids play video games and all, but rarely do you see this much meaning put into it.

The thing with annoying characters is… well… they’re annoying. There are basically two types of them: the types that are annoying because the writers can’t write good dialogue, or the ones that are really meant to be annoying. And even the second category can become a pain to watch if the character in question is just one-dimensional. Meiko has impressed me, though: she has just the right amount of annoying antics so that it becomes a part of her character, while she also has plenty of scenes that just portray her as a normal girl. She has quite a few sides for only two episodes, which is really great to see. Remember Nessa from Fractale? She mostly ran around being happy and once in a while she got sad when Phryne was involved. Meiko is much more dynamic. Thank god!

Whether this series is going to be better or not than Hana-Saku Iroha obviously can’t be said yet: Hana-Saku Iroha is 26 episodes, so it can take its time to take detours to porn novelists. This just has eleven episodes, so it has to deliver in these eleven episodes. And it’s doing a mighty fine job so far!
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica




Ah, the deconstruction: taking a genre or trope, and examine it, put it in a real life situatio, or take a look at it from a completely different angle. I personally love these kinds of series (heck, some of my favourite series are deconstructions). Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica finally shows us another deconstruction of the Mahou shoujo genre, and it is glorious.

This series takes the well known formula: a cute animal comes to a girl, gives her superpowers, and they fight evil. It then examins what it means to be a magical girl. It actually uses its setting quite cleverly in order to really give the life of a magical girl a set of huge advantages and disadvantages. Really, the graphics may be simple, but underneath is a very, very dark storyline.

Teh thing that’s especially amazing about this series is how well everything fits together. It’s twelve episodes long, but it makes excellent use of its time, the characters all fit the story perfectly and everyone serves his own purpose to the points that this series is trying to make. The show really makes sure that it doesn’t waste its time and just about every episode adds something to the overall story and characters. This creates quite a bit of nice development for such a short series.

The graphics are also gorgeous in this series. Unlike a lot of other Shaft series, the animation knows exactly when to be normal, and when to be experimental. The action scenes in this series look really great thanks to all kind of strange and artistic images that are inserted in the surreal battle scenes. Yuki Kajiura is also behind the music, and while this may not be amongst her best work, she still delivers an excellent soundtrack.

It’s definitely a well written and thought-provoking series that continues to evolve. It deserves to be watched, and I see no way for this series to not show up in the top 10 of best eries of 2011. I don’t think that I’ll end up ranking this amongst my favourites, but that entirely because I just consider a lot of other series to be better, not for this show to have major flaws or anything. If I had to nitpick and mention a flaw of this series, then I’d point at the characterization: if the characters here were put in any random slice of life or a more conventional action series, they wouldn’t be interesting to watch at all. It’s entirely the story and the setting that makes something memorable out of them. Again though: this is just nitpicking.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Really well balanced and evolves really well for a 12 episode series. Maks excellent use of the ingredients handed to it.
Characters: 8/10 – Nice development, interesting backstories.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Successfully experiments with its graphics, resulting in some gorgeous action scenes that form a stark contrast with the quiet scenes.
Setting: 9/10 – A terrific deconstruction of a genre that really needed some nudge again.

Suggestions:
– Fancy Lala (Very, very different and slow-paced, but shows a completely different yet just as brilliant take on how to deconstruct the Mahou Shoujo Genre)
– Mahou Shoujotai
– Figure 17 – Tsubasa & Hikaru

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 12

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



A Jesus Ending? It’s been a while since we had one of those.

Yeah, the loophole that the creators used was simply the fact that they never explicitly stated that there was any limit to the wish you could make. Madoka just wishes for a world without witches and Kyuubei… grants it. He doesn’t even seem to have the power to reject such a wish. And so, Madoka dies for our sins and completely changes the world. It neither was the best nor the worst ending of this season, but it didn’t hurt this series either: Madoka Magica remains a wonderful show to watch.

Now obviously the first question that came to my mind when Madoka made her wish was “why the heck didn’t people do this before?” I mean, we all asked this question before: instead of just wishing for simple wishes like resurrecting someone, why couldn’t you wish for an unlimited amount of wishes? Because this series refused to explain that, we all just assumed that Kyuubei would obviously refuse any wishes disadvantageous to him. And here, this episode showed that those wishes could have been possible.

My guess is that nobody made such a wish yet, because Kyuubei keeps targeting emotionally distraught teenaged girls who have just been hit by a major trauma. Yes, in a regular situation in which you’re just sitting in your comfy chair you can indeed try to bend these rules all you’d like, but I can imagine that Kyuubei always presents himself to girls who are desperate for one single wish, offering exactly what they need the most. I could be wrong here, but when you’re about to die in a car accident, you wouldn’t really try to be cheeky and think of a loop-holing wish from out of nowhere.

Madoka was the exception, because at the start of this series, she had no reason to be in despair: she didn’t know anything about Homura, and Kyuubei instead got greedy for her powers, and tried to convince her by tempting her.

And yet, I do fault Madoka for not thinking of this obvious solution any sooner. It’s probably the biggest flaw of this series: she pretty much spends 10,5 episodes angsting, only to snap out of things, go Jesus and wish all the witches away. In the end, the only way in which she really set herself apart is the way in which she refused to change into a mahou shoujo, even though this is a mahou shoujo series. At least the other characters in this series had really interesting backstories.

Oh, but that aftermath was really good. It showed that even though witches are gone, there are still other things that demand a mahou shoujo, and Kyuubei also isn’t gone, albeit completely different. It’s definitely interesting to see the different characters here in a world without Madoka or witches. Especially the latter lead to some interesting character development, but also the lack of Madoka in her family was really interesting.

Overall, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica definitely belongs in the top 3 series that premiered in the past Autumn and Winter Season, along with Hourou Musuko and Level E. Whether or not it was the best out of all of them though is very hard to say because they’re amazing at completely different things. Hourou Musuko also had an amazing second half, Level E had an absolutely fantastic beginning. Either way though, this was the best series that Shaft has made since Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei 1, and I really hope that future Shaft series will follow this series in its tracks: not just blindly copy Shinbo’s style, but also letting the writers really do what they want to do.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – 11

by psgels, posted in Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica



Dear Shaft: thank you for actually finishing this episode in time and not pulling another Bakemonogatari. Having to wait a month for the final two episodes still is pretty doable. Episode 11 was a rock-solid build-up that was quite worth the wait.

With just about every other character out of the picture now, this episode indeed focused on Madoka, Homura and Kyuubei, but also surprisingly Madoka’s mother also played a large role here. It was really building up to the inevitable: Madoka becoming a mahou shoujo. Or at least, that was very heavily implied at the end of this episode. Overall, while it would have been nice for Madoka to actually refuse Kyuubei throughout the entire series, I can see why she did it: as long as that Walpurgis night can only be defeated by Madoka in her Mahou Shoujo-form, this time-loop will continue on endlessly.

Just, what was the point of that one monologue of Kyuubei? The one where he started talking about the past of the mahou shoujo, where he started talking how many famous girls in history were actually mahou shoujo who were plunged into despair, and how without them we’d still live in caves? That just makes no sense and is completely out of context here.

Now, as for the ending: right now things are heading in exactly the way that has been built up by the previous episodes. At the moment, we’ve reached the inescapable situation where Madoka will destroy the world once she defeats the Walpurgis Night (after all: superpowered Madoka will make for a very exciting final battle). It really seems to be heading towards a loophole ending: the creators try to bend around their own rules in order to find a loophole out of its chaos. It probably will be with casualties, but at least the world will be saved. These kinds of endings really depend on a) how good that loophole is, and b) how exciting the final battle is. Madoka definitely deserves a good closure.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Hyouge Mono – 03

by psgels, posted in Hyouge Mono



This episode had even more talking than the previous two episodes. It had a lot of politics and other conversations, and it actually managed to make them exciting. A lot was about Oda Nobunaga’s ambitions, discussed by his followers. It’s an excellent build-up, it touched a bit upon his backstory and really made him out to be this megalomaniac leader.

Also, this series has some strange fascination with facial hair. I mean, the vast majority of the characters here have moustaches (in fact, it has the first moustached lead character I’ve seen in a long, long while), but this episode also put some strange amount of detail in the sideburns of each character, up to the point where they were blowing really smoothly in the wind. That’s part of the charm of this series, though: the really strange facial art. Especially the facial expressions make for some awesome non-verbal communication.

Like most other series about politics, the cast is also looking out to be huge here. These past three episodes have focused on a ton of different characters. Now, these are obviously not as well fleshed out as the lead characters, but they fit in well with the other characters, in particular Sasuke. I’m not sure what it is about him, but they all play wonderfully off of him.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Supernatural The Animation – 18

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Now talk about an amazing aftermath here. The previous episode did it with a flashback, now this episode takes an in-depth look at making a pact with a demon. It’s all about Dean getting over John’s death, and I’m very impressed at how they did it. It’s not just “angst angst angst”, but it also ask the question: “what if there was a way to sell your soul to the devil to bring him back again?”

There is some repetition again (here we have yet another guy who sells his soul to the devil to save a loved one), but I have to say that when looking at these cases overall, they actually discuss quite a number of different cases. It’s very dangerous to try and pull things like these off due to the big potential of repeating yourself and all, but this show did this pretty well. The creators really made sure to make all of these cases relate to John’s sacrifice.

Interestingly, this episode showed that demons can also terminate their own contracts. It wasn’t shown whether or not the woman in this story survived or not, but this also means that in theory the yellow eyed demon can also be blackmailed into releasing John. I hope that the creators handle this rather tacky situation carefully in order not to ruin these past number of episodes.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Steins;Gate – 03

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Hacking in anime is plugging in your PC, randomly typing stuff, doing some magic mumbo jumbo and being able to completely overtake other systems, even when these are completely unconnected from the outside. Because of that I’m really glad to see that we finally have a show who at least somewhat understands the concepts of SQL Injection. Hacking into CERN (not SERN!) is indeed stretching it a bit, but hey, this show is more grounded in reality than the vast majority of other series.

In any case it’s great to see a series so heavily based on dialogue again. And I don’t mean the crappy kind of dialogue like with Oretsuba, but it’s really quite interesting and well researched and I really like how it’s already gotten pretty in-depth into its subject with only 3 episodes. It’s been a while since we’ve seen series with dialogue as complex as Steins;Gate and Hyouge Mono and it’s great to see creators attempting these kinds of series again.

On a side-note: that girl with that hat just keeps reminding me of Kobato, even considering that they’ve got the same voice actress. I just keep having to remind myself that their characters are completely different whenever she opens her mouth. I wouldn’t call this a flaw, though it’s still a bit unnerving. Instead the most annoying parts of this show are whenever the characters start talking about perverts and fanservice. It just feels out of place and detracts from the interesting stuff.

It’s also interesting how this show is well researched, but at the same time takes its liberties here and there in the small details. For example, the original John Titor claimed that he needed an IBM 5100 (not IBN 5100) in order to use it as a reference to fix various legacy bugs in some computer programs, hinting at the 2038 problem (similar to the Y2K problem, this will happen when the Unix Time runs out of possible values). As a computer scientist I have to laugh at how little sense that makes. In Steins;Gate however, this reason was changed by making the computer language BASIC (one of the first programming languages ever that found widespread use) younger than that PC, meaning that its software talks to its hardware in a completely different way; not based on really complicated standards to give it widespread appeal. I still have no idea how that could have helped him, but I’m impressed nonetheless.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Supernatural The Animation – 17

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Whoa, even more background! Seriously, at how many different ages have we seen our characters by now? Apart from Sam’s teenaged years, we’ve pretty much gotten through the entire spectrum of these characters at this point, and it’s really starting to pay off now. And even though we don’t get to see these ten years, you can really start to see now how these characters evolved throughout time. I’d like to applaud this show for that.

I’ve got one more point of criticism though. It’s a bit nit-picky, but it really has gotten to my attention that any cute girl who Sam and Dean meet, ends up possessed by the devil. I mean, I know that that yellow eyed demon is very prolific in creating his servants and all, but if it wasn’t for the Kappa episode there hardly would have been anyone good-natured left who didn’t just act as a random victim during these past number of episodes. And even the guys from the Kappa episode were murdered in the end. Let’s see whether the remaining episodes can bring some variety in this area, because this show certainly showed that it knows how to keep other aspects varied.

Also, the major plot point that the previous episodes have been hinting at for a while now was revealed in this episode: Sam has huge powers and apparently is going to end up destroying the world. Obviously development is necessary to not make a cheese-ball out of that, but with the past number of episodes as an indication that should be no problem. The moose scene in any case did its job really well and made quite an impact.

As for the stiff acting, this pretty much turned out like Rainbow did: the story is more than good enough, and the development of the characters has actually made up for it. Now, this show perhaps is not as intense as Rainbow was, but then again the acting also wasn’t as bad as in Rainbow’s early parts.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Supernatural The Animation – 16

by psgels, posted in Supernatural The Animation



Wow, what an episode! This is why I love the “first half episodic, second half story”-type of series: they may take a while longer to get to their point, but whenever they get to it they can really do some amazing stuff. This episode was chock full of character development, which got even better due to the build-up that the first half of this season brought in.

This was an excellent case of taking a cliche and pulling it off so well that it doesn’t matter that it’s been done before: there definitely was no lack of creativity in this episode here. John really made a conscious, and a very well grounded one. It’s the same decision that many others in this series have made as well; it totally fits into place. His repentance at the end, after all of the time that Sam and Dean spent yelling at him was excellent. Unfortunately, this also means that my favourite character of this show is gone now…

On top of that, Dean’s out of body experience and him going against the grim reaper was awesome too. Especially considering how it wasn’t some sort of simple-minded monster or silly parody of it. That reaper made it very clear that unless something would be done, Dean would have died. It wasn’t the most eventful episode, but the wait to see what would end up causing Dean to get out of his coma was more than enough to build up an amazing tension.
Rating: ** (Excellent)