OVA Impressions: Votoms Finder

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



With both Votoms Finder and Case;Irvine, the creators got the strange idea that the usual Votoms mecha designs were too bland, so they decided to give them a stylish upgrade. That’s like, missing the entire point of Votoms here!

In any case, Votoms Finder is much better than Case;Irvine. It’s neither overly angsty or a Gundam wannabe, and even though it introduces concepts that would have been really weird in the Votoms Franchise, it also succeeds in expanding its franchise a bit. Its biggest sin is that apart from that, I don’t really have naything to praise it for.

The action was nice, but never really stood out. The story… well, there was a story. It was a story that fitted well within 40 minutes, but apart from that it’s just a damsel in distress story with just one single twist in the middle. The characters… they’re not annoying or anything and I guess that they’re likable enough, but they’re all pretty one-dimensional. Why would you want to watch this? Uh, I really have no idea.

After this post, I’m really going to stop blogging these OVAs, just for the heck of it. They just take away too much of my time and I want to stop writing about things that just don’t interest me. Talking about bad and mediocre stuff can be fun once in a while, but right now I’ve done just too much of that. Rants are fun once in a while but if you do them too often you’re just going to sound really whiny or obnoxious.

From now on, the only OVAs that I’ll create a separate post about are the ones that either:
– Are really good (read: episode rating of 8,5 or above)
– Are really underrated (nobody talks about them and they deserve more recognition).
– Are something that I really want to say something about (episodes that perhaps aren’t the best, but somehow did something to get me really fired up).
Regarding the others, I’m planning to just compile a list of general impressions for my monthly summaries. Writing posts about every single OVA that comes out that consist out of four or more paragraphs… those are just too much. This also includes things like Gundam Unicorn unless it does something really good, or .Hack//Quantum when it fails to really stand out. Blogging all of these OVAs at the same time, alongside all of the TV-series that come out is just too much of a chore.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,25/10

Steins;Gate – 02

by psgels, posted in Steins;Gate



Stein’s Gate has the most subtle build-up of the season, and yet at the same time it has its moments that are completely un-subtle. The colours are all washed out, there is no complex background music but instead it consists out of simple sounds, and yet it has a very hammy lead character that combines together surprisingly well. The atmosphere is really tight when it needs to, and the lead character provides some nice silliness to lighten the mood from this atmosphere.

Now, that cross-dresser was a bit too much, and I’m also not sure where that maid cafe suddenly came from (seriously, are there actually cafes in Japan in which the waitresses aren’t dressed as maids? This episode overall was not as impressive as the first one, but it still had a lot to like about it. The dialogue in particular is nicely down to earth and interesting: it’s well written for both the subtle and silly parts, making sure that it doesn’t destroy the mood of the serious parts.

Also, the mysterious John Titor is definitely an interesting addition to this series: a time traveller who appeared ten years ago, and in the meantime erased his own existence. This series has definitely chosen interesting subject material with time travel, and that gel banana also shows that it’s really planning to make use of it.

The big question for this series right now is: why is Hououin special? Why did he not forget about time resetting itself?
Rating: * (Good)

Showa Monogatari – 01 – AGAIN

by psgels, posted in Showa Monogatari



So, just to make sure I went back to the episode 01 that aired a week ago. It’s completely new again. Stop being so confusing with your episode numbers!

So, to recap:
– The episodes 03, 05, 08 and 09 that aired during the past week are the same as episodes 01, 02, 03 and 04 that were released as preview episodes back in January and February.
– The episodes 01 and 02 that aired during the past two weeks have new content.
– Do not ask me why the creators found it a good idea to just randomly select four episodes and reshuffle them into preview episodes.

It feels a bit weird to watch this opening episode while already having seen five other episodes, but it does fit as an opening much better than the “fake” first episode, which did bring in a lot of random drama around Kouhei and his father. This episode introduced all of the characters, it established Kouhei’s father as someone with anger management problems despite his good intentions, we finally see Kouhei’s sister’s crush formally introduced. And to my surprise that bearded guy from episode two is a recurring character. Seriously, he looks a bit like a rapist or something…

Strangely enough, this episode had exactly three shots where the animation was much, much better than the rest of this series. It’s really obvious that this was meant to be the first episode, which baffles me even more that they didn’t use that animation for the first preview episode. I mean, isn’t the entire point of spending a lot of the animation budget on the first episode the fact that it’s supposed to improve the FIRST impressions? It defeats the purpose a bit to use this as a fifth impression…

Now, because it was meant to introduce everything, this episode probably established the least in comparison to all of the other episodes. Most of the things introduced were already established in the episodes that preceded it, and it never really got to look at the characters in-depth. The previous episodes were all wonderfully varied and all had their own focus, so this episode wasn’t among the best of this series.
Rating: * (Good)

Showa Monogatari – 02 – Take 3

by psgels, posted in Showa Monogatari



Um… yeah. Can someone explain the bizarre airing schedule of this series?

I mean, I don’t get it anymore. Showa Monogatari aired its first four episodes back in January and February. First episode 01 was released, then episode 03 followed, then 02 and then 04. That already was confusing in itself, but I just assumed that this series would just air normally during this spring season. I was planning to just pick it back up as soon as episode 05 aired.

And yet, this week baffled me when suddenly episodes 5, 8 and 9 popped up from nowhere. Those turned out to be episodes 2, 3 and 4 of earlier. Here we meanwhile have episode 2, which turned out to be a completely new episode. Then the day before yesterday we also suddenly got treated to episode 3. I haven’t checked it out yet (too busy!) but what the heck is that one going to be? Showa Monogatari has by far the weirdest airing schedule I’ve ever seen. Never have I seen an airing schedule that was so much over the place.

This episode by the way was really good. Again, this show isn’t about Kouhei, the young kid. He may get a lot of airtime, but this episode was much more about his brother and his sister. Even his father showed something new about himself. Especially his brother got a great episode. Being outright rejected on his first date, that’s really something you don’t see often in anima that highly adheres to the concept of “true love”. And yet at the same time this series has a lot of different romances here: Kouhei’s parents’ marriage was really traditional, while his sister seems to be in a completely different situation with that guy she likes.

I also like how this show isn’t afraid to get a bit corny when it comes to the entertainment of that era. That dance party for example looked really silly when looked at with a modern eye, and the same goes for when everyone suddenly started singing. And yet, those things probably were the most normal things of entertainment in the eras before mass communication.

Oh, and the reunion also explained quite a bit of something that happened in episode four surrounding Kouhei’s brother’s friends. This was the episode that was meant to set that up, and I really suspect that there will be more episodes that are going to focus around him, trying to find a place in society. This episode also gave a lot of meaning to that particular episode as well. The production values may not be good, but it knows how to tell a story.

One thing that I don’t agree with is to have Kouhei’s parent’s background episode air after this episode. I especially liked how this episode told more about Kouhei’s father and how he grew up. I really like the idea of first showing him in his late teens, only to go for him in his early teens afterwards.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
EDIT: I just watched that mysterious episode 03 that popped up the day before yesterday. It’s episode 01 again. What the…?

Some Quick First Impressions: Lotte no Omocha, Hoshizora e Kakaru Hoshi and The World God Only Knows 2

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Lotte no Omocha

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a ten year old succubus who needs to find herself a male to suck… wait what?
Well, on the bright side Shinbo actually held himself back: his style for once wasn’t all over the place here and the other creators also got their chance to bring their own style out. Unfortunately though, this still wasn’t very good. A lot of this has to do with Rie Kugimiya who is getting really annoying having to play the umpth tsundere, although at the very least she’s more eloquent here then her previous role in Dragon Crisis. She remains an annoying brat, though and this episode was tedious to sit through because of her. The character designs are also really generic and the music was just stock music as well. There was an actual story, but it moved awfully slow here and a lot of time was just reserved for moe antics that were neither funny nor enjoyable. There is only one character who caught my attention, that purple-haired servant. She at least was interesting to watch and actually seemed to have half a braincel. I probably would have been a lot more positive about this series is if focused on her instead.
OP: I hope that this wasn’t one of those “let’s summarize the plot here in 90 seconds”-OPs, because it really looked like one.
ED: Could have been worse, but still a boring ballad.
Potential: 10%

Hoshizora e Kakaru Hoshi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a lot of cute girls that he can date.
This was actually nearly unwatchable. It’s the kind of hentai game adaptation that pulls every cliche it can think of, puts no creativity whatsoever in its scenario, is horribly produced and does just about everything in its power to make its females as annoying to watch as possible. You really know the drill: the lead character arrives in town as a transfer student, he bumps into a bunch of random girls, accidentally kisses one, then runs naked into the shower in front of another one, and upsets an older woman with big boobs by calling her a middle-aged lady. This is the kind of crap that has been popping up for nearly a decade now. On top of that, though, the voice acting is also horrible. Especially the main female sounds like she lives in a tank full of helium, the male lead’s acting is abysmal whenever he’s embarrassed, his younger brother sounds way too much like a little girl and it has the most annoying white haired girl who does nothing but whine at the male lead. The character designs are also really bad and completely uninspired. There were some hints at a serious story, but I really don’t see this show doing anything good with them with this kind of opening episode.
OP: Anime seriously needs to stop forcing voice actresses who can’t sing to sing in the OP for a show.
ED: Again, very badly sung.
Potential: 0%

The World God Only Knows 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character needs to kiss certain girls in order to remain alive.
This episode was much of the same as the first season. Which like, really is a bad thing here because the first season already was really hard to sit through. I mean, this obviously wasn’t as bad as Sofuteni or Oretsuba because it really does try to give its characters an interesting story, but TWGOK still is inherently flawed: everything in this series is exactly like the games that Keima plays. The characters are all one-sided with a twist, they all immediately fall in love with the main character, and they all don’t amount to much beyond their quirks. And of course, you don’t become good at martial arts by learning the basics, but by cleaning the floor, if a cool person enters the classroom everyone suddenly gets quiet and gazes in a awe, and the female lead is incredibly klutzy, whiny and annoying (no, that also didn’t change, unfortunately). This show fails at what it is trying to do here by having no real difference between games and reality, and even now there still is no hint whatsoever that this is going to change!
OP: The classic case of “oh, the first OP was really good, so let’s make another version like it that tries too hard and ruins itself.
ED: Boring J-pop, but granted: it is better than the first ED.
Potential: 30%

Hana-Saku Iroha – 02

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha



Hana-Saku Iroha: the series with the best drama of the season. I seriously did not expect this show to already be this good this soon, and Noitamina’s Anohana is going to have some really stiff competition here. What’s best is that finally, PA Works are moving into 26 episoded series.

The strength of this series is that it has a huge cast of characters who all somehow clash with each other, and it plays off of this really well. Ohana is a great lead character whose personality is perfect for this series, but the other main characters are all great to watch. Her strict grandmother and the shy waitress in particular were great, and I also loved the bickering between her and the cook assistant who keeps telling her to die..

What’s interesting is that some of the people have this habit of just walking away when they run into a situation they don’t like. Ohana actually made good use of that at the end of this episode with a particularly wonderful climax and I really hope that this show can keep this up.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Tiger & Bunny – 02

by psgels, posted in Tiger & Bunny



Tiger & Bunny is the series with the most impressive big picture of the season: perhaps it doesn’t have a single thing at which it’s the best of the season, but it has a bit of everything and does a lot of things right: likable characters, original backstory, good action, the second-best soundtrack of the season (after Hyouge Mono, which was bound to have the best soundtrack of the season anyway), an excellent sense of action and yet it isn’t afraid to look at its setting with some depth in mind, despite the flashy colours.

The flaws so far are a number of overused cliches that pop up here and there, though they all remain minor. I’m referring tot he flamboyant gay, for example, or how in this episode the bully was one of those one-sided bullies who are just there to get a plot going. Oh, and the way in which we have a workaholic who has no time for his daughter. That last one is really nit-picky, though, because this episode provided enough hints at how the creators plan to give the lead characters’ relationship with his daughter a lot of time to develop. Plus, we have a main character who is old enough to have a teenaged daughter. How awesome is that? During most other seasons we should have been glad enough to have a show with a character in his early twenties.

This episode also toyed with some other cliches as well. For example, the lead character gets a new suit that he obviously isn’t used to. Of course the likelihood for him to screw up by not knowing the right buttons to press is going to be larger. I also like how neither the lead character nor his partner are forcedly put above each other: they both have their strengths and weaknesses and yet they’re surprisingly similar: they’re both short-sighted, just in completely different ways.

In terms of the setting, this episode gave quite a nice hint about how the superheroes evolved in this universe. The superhero that the main character ran into when he was young looked really crude. It probably was at a time when the NEXT only barely appeared, and he was one of the first to take up the role of being a superhero. My guess is that after this guy caught popularity, the entire business was commercialized, people got some budget for actually good costumes and entire trends were born, like turning that ice girl into a complete idol. I also love how this show criticizes mass media, but at the same time doesn’t completely label them as purely evil.

Oh, and regarding the soundtrack: Yoshihiro Ike is one of my favourite composers, alongside Hikaru Nanase and Yuki Kajiura. It’s because of that that I’m really glad to see him on another series again where his soundtrack really works. He’s really masterful at these subtle background sounds that do a fantastic job at creating an atmosphere, and the consistency at which he does this is stunning.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Nichijou – 02

by psgels, posted in Spring 2011 Kaleidoscope



In this Spring 2011 Kaleidoscope, I’ll be blogging a different series each week. For me, a week starts on Monday and ends on Sunday, so for this first week I could only choose between Dog Days and Nichijou. Now, I really don’t like Dog Days (it’s not the premise; it’s the half-assed execution that gets me), I figured that this would be a good chance to wrap up my thoughts on the tons of slice of life series this season. In technical terms, Nichijou again has the most solid execution, but I’m probably going to drop it after this episode.

The thing is that I love slice of life… as long as I care about the characters. If not, they they bore me beyond belief, and unfortunately after three episodes (the OVA included), I’m still missing this with Nichijou. There are several reasons for this, but there are two that really stand out for me:

First of all: it tries to be funny, while it actually isn’t and I really don’t like people making jokes that just aren’t funny. Sure, this episode had some laughs, but they’re just too few and far inbetween. This series also has the tendency to make a joke, then instead of just wrapping it up, dragging it further for way too long in the hopes of squeezing some extra laughs out of it. Take a look at Hen Zemi and Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san: those are two series that actually figured out that you don’t necessarily need to take up 20 minute episodes. I think that that would also have fitted Nichijou. It would have really tightened up the pacing.

The second reason: who are these characters? What exactly do we know about them? I mean, the whole point of slice of life is to show the everyday activities of its characters without the usual forced drama or unrealistic action plot: just show some ordinary people living their daily lives. However, it’s not like ordinary people are completely bland either. Everyone still needs to have at least some background, but even there this show just refuses to show even the slightest hints at characterization. All we know right now is that the lead character has a sister and the professor made herself a robot.

It’s the same problem I had with Lucky Star: these characters are simply way too one-dimensional and one-sided. K-On at least bothered to make its cast feel like regular high school girls. These two however don’t even bother.

Where this show stands above Lucky Star (and really miles above), is with its animation and creativity. Especially the running scene in this episode was excellent. It’s the scenes like that that are the big selling point of this series. At this point though, I don’t think that it’ll be enough for this series: there are just too many other scenes that just don’t work.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

The Star of Cottonland Review – 82,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Ever feel like you’re in the need of a really big hug? You need something warm and charming to watch? Meet The Star of Cottonland. This movie is beyond cute.

The creators of this movie set themselves the task to make its lead character as adorable as possible and they succeeded pretty well, actually. It’s a unique little movie about a small kitten in a world where cats are drawn as people. Ranging from her subtle movements, innocent inner monologues, subtle development and her non-verbal communication: everything that the lead character does is chock full of charms. This is a movie that was made by people who really like cats, there is no doubt about it.

Beyond that though, this movie also shines because it has quite a creative storyline. There are none of the usual cliches or tropes, and the ones that are there are averted throughout the movie. It has some bittersweet elements, but it’s never cheesy. In fact, the reason why these bittersweet elements work so well is because of how subtly they’re delivered, excellently combining the lead characters’ charm. Technically, this is a movie about self-discovery, but it chose a pretty original way to play out. It leaves a lot of stuff successfully up to the viewers’ imaginations and it also know exactly how much it should wrap up in order to feel complete.

Now, there are a few flaws here and there among the side characters, some are just one-dimensional and others have rather forced motivation. The weirdest is one particular woman with an allergy of cats, though. For some strange reason, the creators of this movie seem to confuse cat allergy with cat phobia. This woman never sneezes or gets any itches, but instead acts completely neurotic whenever a cat is in her vicinity.

In any case, a Star of Cottonland is a well made movie. It’s quite well animated especially around the lead character. It’s entire cast does an excellent job of growig on you as the movie goes on, and it’s a very nice watch for anyone who is looking for something really cute for 90 minutes.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Well restrained, yet makes the story evolve really well.
Characters: 9/10 – Absolutely adorable lead character; the creators did an amazing job of bringing a young kitten to life. Side characters have a few problems here and there.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Life-like animation for the lead character.
Setting: 8/10 – The way in which this series treats cats is a really nice idea.

Suggestions:
– Chi’s Sweet Home
– Junkers Come Here
– Kero Kero Chime

X-Men – 02

by psgels, posted in X-Men




For the past years, I’ve always had a ton of trouble figuring out which series to blog. This time though, I don’t have that at all. I already have a very good idea of the 10 series that I’m going to blog this season, even though four of them haven’t aired yet. Seriously, there is a lot of good stuff in this season. First of all, X-Men. The show with the best character designs of the season.

Beyond that though, we finally get to see the real potential of the Marvel Anime. This was the calibre that I expected when Madhouse first announced this project. While Wolverine was a major step above Iron Man,the X-Men again are a step above Wolverine. All they have to do now is properly pace their story like Wolverine dd (with its admittedly far simpler story) and this will be really excellent.

This show just has a terrific sense of atmosphere. The build-up, characters, animation and music all contribute wonderfully to it. The drama around Cyclops can be a bit cheesy, but it does work at creating some necessary tension between the lead characters: not enough to get obnoxious, but enough to push them forward and make them more interesting.

The story so far is simple, but pretty effective. Innocent mutants being kidnapped: it works, and has the potential to develop into something interesting later on. I especially love how that one guy who was turned into a monster was draw. I don’t mean his monster form, but rather the moment where he actually died. The thing with this series is that the character designs are vastly different, and yet both the flamboyant main characters and the average minor characters: all of them look like a lot of time was spent on their designs, to make all of them unique. This is what really impressed me about these first two episodes.

What’s really refreshing about this season as well is that for once, teenagers aren’t dominating in nearly every series. Remember how during the previous Winter-Season, Wolverine was the only series that did not have a teenager as its lead character? Instead, we have multiple series here with lead characters in their twenties and even thirties. Yay for variety!
Rating: ** (Excellent)