Level E – 13

by psgels, posted in Level E



That was an awesome end to an awesome series. The twist had it coming, but it was perfect to close off this show.

This episode did a great job of making the princess more than just about any other romantic interest. I mean, the basis premise for this episode may have been an arranged marriage, but that’s about the only stock plot device that appeared in this past arc. It’s a great idea to have the princess be as cunning as the prince himself, and still make her innocent at the same time. Somewhat.

I also love how in the end, the prince was fooled by bland acting from the two thieves who pretended to be the very helpless-looking brother and princess. That’s the point where he really got caught off-guard.

Overall, If I wasn’t one already, I’m now a really big fan of David Production. Only Dogs was bad, but apart from that, Ristorante Paradiso, Armed Librarians and Level E were all wonderfully creative and enjoyable series. I really like the ambition that these people have to time and time again come with something interesting. Combined with Studio Pierrot they really made for one heck of an interesting comedy.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

OVA Impressions: Tansuwarashi

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions, Young Animator Training Project



Tansuwarashi is Production IG’s entry in the Young Animator Training Project, and it it absolutely adorable. It’s the only one of the for that I can really see work as an actual series: Ojii-san no Lamp was perfect with just 20 minutes, while Kizuna Ichigeki and Bannou Yasai Ninninman would have gotten really annoying if they were any longer.

A slice of life series about an office lady who finds a group of spirits in her closet though, I’d love to watch that. All of the characters just have this natural charm to them, even though there are many characters who are all pretty one sided. This OVA shined at making an entire happy family from them. And besides: when was the last time where we got to see an anime that featured an actual female lead who was neither a teenager nor a student? Those characters are even rarer than male adult main characters.

As for the animation, it wasn’t as impressive as the others, and instead it was very down to earth. The in between animation did get quite good at times, though.

Overall, the Young Animator Training Project was at its best when it combined its childish charms with adult issues. Especially Ojii-san no Lamp and Tansuwarashi were good at this. Meanwhile, the animation was particularly impressive in Kizuna Ichigeki: we can expect some great things from them in the future, as soon as they manage to get themselves some good sponsors and scriptwriters. It’s definitely been an interesting experiment.
OVA Episode Rating: 8/10

Some Quick First Impressions: Suzy’s Zoo and Fireball Charming

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Fujilog

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in his mid-life crisis.
Fujilog… is a sitcom. You know, the kind where we follow a middle aged guy and his family throughout random boring adventures while he nags constantly at everything. (In case you’re wondering: no, I do not like sitcoms, with only very few exceptions). In this episode he whines about how good the prefecture is in which he lives and ends up running for governor, and losing. To be honest, I didn’t like it, but this admittedly IS deeply rooted in Japanese culture. Perhaps if you live in Japan, you might get a bit of a better appreciation of what this show is trying to do. There is plenty of animation here, but it’s entirely in ugly CG.
Potential: 10%

Suzy’s Zoo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a stuffed animal.
At the start of each season, I also always review the kiddie shows that pop up. But seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where so little happens as in this one. All this episode was about was a moving duck toy taking a stuffed bear outside, the duck gets distracted by a grass-hopper, the bear moves, they hug, and the episode ends. I know that this episode was only two minutes long, but still I’m not really sure what I just watched. Thee animation is good for a kiddie show, though. It’s obviously in CG, but the creators actually put in effort to make it blend in with the backgrounds. Really young kids (read: of age 2 and 3) will probably love this one. Apart from that though… well, I guess that if you were really desperate for a big hug then this show suffices as well.
Potential: 10%

Fireball Charming

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a robot princess who lives in a giant fortress in the middle of a big war between robots and humans.
Fireball Charming: the show without introductions! Seriously, this episode just… starts. Without ever giving the viewer a chance to sit back. This episode was only 2 minutes long, but it really made use of its time. It’s actually improved a bit here and there, but the formula is still the same: two robots just talk about all sorts of stuff while making silly poses. And again, it works surprisingly well. What they’re talking about is consistently interesting and its deadpan humour makes this even better. In the meantime, the characters are moving around even more compared to the first season, which forces you to pay even more attention during these two minutes. Very recommended if you’re looking for a quick comedy.
Potential: 75%

Some Quick First Impressions: Gintama’, Steins;Gate and Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, Steins;Gate

Gintama’

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a samurai.
I originally dropped the first Gintama season around episode 120. In short, the reason was the change of direction: it was less funny, the focus changed from dialogue to bloody action and some arcs got dragged out needlessly. It wasn’t bad by a long shot, but nowhere up to the standard of the first 100 episodes. With that in mind though, I really have to say that this episode felt much more like the first 100 episodes than the second. It was a really hilarious episode that completely broke the fourth wall in usual Gintama fashion. This is really the Gintama that I’ve been waiting for. The dialogue is again sharp and witty and I loved this episode. However, I do have one major criticism here: After watching more than 120 episodes of this show, it is getting predictable nonetheless. I could see quite a few of the anti-climaxes in this episode coming from afar. While those punchlines were utterly hilarious, it’s this predictability that will be the biggest problem for this sequel. Also (but this is just nitpicking), another thing that bothered me in this episode was that the facial expressions tried too hard. I think that a little more deadpan would have been a better choice, especially because of how characters hardly ever seemed to change their facial expressions.
OP: Best OP song of the season so far. Awesome guitar riffs.
ED: Nice idea, bu the cheesy vocals don’t fit in well.
Potential: 80%

Steins;Gate

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets involved in a time travel conspiracy.
Steins;Gate… again is an excellent addition to this already excellent season. This one stands out in the best atmosphere: it’s really good at using its quiet pacing to build up tension and to retain that tension with some excellent climaxes. It’s got a deliberately overacting lead character (another adult, by the way), who against my expectations contrasted sharply with the dark atmosphere of this series, which worked really well. He’s exceptionally good at keeping the balls into the air and making things consistently interesting. This is a series that depends a lot on its dialogue, and it passes here with flying colors thanks to this guy, who just keeps changing the setting and topic in order to remain fresh and interesting. And yet there is some order to his chaos, which pays off during the climaxes in this episode. The females also were really great to watch, and knew that they shouldn’t try to look like moe stereotypes, but just play themselves. This was a quiet yet very interesting episode and I’m really looking forward to seeing more.
Potential: 85%

Ore-tachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is surrounded by a bunch of girls.
Keeping up in the tradition of this season in which series are either really really good, or not interesting at all, Oretsuba is utter crap. Of course, I pretty much expected it to be bad when I first learned of it, but this show is so bizarrely horrible in a way that I never saw coming. The best way to compare this show with is with Shukufuku no Campanella on weed. The production values here are utterly terrible, with especially the voice actors laughably bad, but what really striked me here is that the scenario writers had no idea what they were doing. This entire episode was just a string of random sketches with no point or purpose that were nothing more than endless unfunny and terrible dialogues between random characters. Most of the time in this episode is actually not focused on the lead characters, but some random dialogue between three random guys that just refuses to end. The lead character only appears twice. Once to be hugged by all of the main females (who also don’t appear for most of this episode in favour of a random waitress and young girl) and one that simply out of nowhere had him claim to come from a parallel dimension. It just… made no sense whatsoever. Oh, and the fanservice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a TV-series with fanservice that was THIS lazy… to the point where it just gets bizarre.
ED: Um, random.
Potential: 0%

Star Driver Review – 85/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Star Driver




Out of all the series that premiered during the past Autumn 2010 season, Star Driver stood above the others, promising an epic mecha story; completely original, not based on anything and animated by Bones. It really looked to be the classic of the season. In the end though, that did not happen, but it still has enough to like.

It’s a series that combines school life with over the top mecha battles. It has quite a large cast of characters, all of which it tries to flesh out. And to be honest, it does a pretty good job there. Star Driver’s cast is fresh and dynamic, and the characters that do get the chance to show their stories are well fleshed out and interesting to watch. The school life moments make this a fun and cheerful show to watch, with a good balance between drama and light-hearted stuff.

Where Star Driver falls down is in its ambition. It both tried to have a huge story and cast, and tried to take its time and make this an enjoyable slow paced storyline. It just didn’t manage to do both and instead of focusing on one, both ended up a bit too unfinished. The story knows how to build up to to its final climax. In fact the final episode is excellent in how it brings a lot of build up from the entire series together. But at the same time there are a ton of plot devices that it never uses, the story is full of plotholes, and half the cast never gets its time in the spotlight, leaving them kindof wasted and especially making the scenes that focus on them rather pointless.

The nasty thing here is that tar Driver could have become an utter classic if it had more episodes. It’s good, but it has left a ton of potential lying around by not being able to focus on everything, and focusing on too many characters (even though it created a good reason for trying to do so). The mecha battles also get less and less interesting as time goes on. Both because in the end they serve no real purpose to the storylines, but also because of how they just get more and more repetitive.

So does that make this series worth watching in the end? I’d say that it does. It definitely has a great storyline and characters; it’s just not as good as what it could have been. The creators did succeed into creating a fun and original series to watch and keep you busy, interested and excited. Just don’t expect anything amazing.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Tries to do too much in too little time and ends up unbalanced because of it, but it still is able to write good scenarios and climaxes.
Characters: 9/10 – Takuto never really established himself as an excellent lead character, but there are quite a few excellent side-characters here. And the cast is very versatile just consistently interesting to watch.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Amazing looking mecha battles and soundtracks, with the animation outside of the mecha battles being quite good as well.
Setting: 8/10 – A bit incomplete, but it’s definitely inspired and original, and requires a lot of reading inbetween the lines.

Suggestions:
– Revolutionary Girl Utena
– Macross Frontier
– Baccano

Star Driver – 25

by psgels, posted in Star Driver



Ah, thank god this didn’t end with a downer ending. In fact, I really liked this ending and how over the top it was, and how it at the same time brought this entire show together. It’s not perfect, it had some flaws, but I still really liked this ending, and how this episode really showed how this series has been planning up to this episode

A lot of things became clear with this episode. First of all, if you leave his intentions aside, then Head is an excellent villain. He knew exactly what he wanted, and the entire series is pretty much just him, waiting for the right opportunity, along with the guy whose cybody allowed one to take over other cybodies having to wake up. All of his actions were carefully calculated to getting at this point, using everyone around him, only to drop them when the time is right.

Also, at the start of this series I remember that I really liked the way in which Cybodies only could fight once. Of course this went away as soon as the cybody recovery system was introduced, but the concept remained the same: every character only could get one chance to fight Takuto, unless they took the big risk of regenerating their cybody. That’s the entire reason why so many new characters were introduced over the series: fightig Takuto for a second time was very hard to do in this series.

In fact, hardly any cybody was ever regenerated. At least, up till this episode, where the libido was so high that it became much safer to regenerate. Interesting, if the creators actually failed to make this episode exciting, that entire plot twist would have failed. That’s definitely an interesting link between a self-fulfilling storyline here. And really: the action in this episode was excellent. You can really see that Bones were saving up for this episode.

At the same time, with this episode also Sugata’s actions make perfect sense. I really wondered what the heck was up with him in this episode, especially with how he seemed to have been built up as the major villain. Instead, he was the tragic character of this show: the character who needed to be saved. He too only acted when he needed to act, and therefore had no purpose in most of the storyline. His Cybody had a very specific part here, and because of his absence in any action he became a very weird character. Instead, he too was just waiting for the moment where he could activate Samekh again, in order to deactivate it, so that he could deactivate it again.

This waiting game was essential to this series. Remember how the creators intended this to be a show that combined mecha battles with school life? Having the main parties waiting, while having the people around them just goof off and stall for time is what allowed the school life to return throughout the entire series. It’s this that fleshed out the characters in this series so well, despite being a double harem in a setting that has already been horribly abused by anime.

Now, for the parts that definitely could have been done better: Head’s motives could have been less stereotypically evil. Oh, and the main star of this show, Takuto: he never really developed, did he? He’s actually one of the characters with the least amount of depth. He’s enjoyable, but all he ever does is kick ass. He too could have been more varied. That would have also made the battles in the second half a lot more interesting. In fact, most of the plotholes that this episode left open surround him: who is he? Why is he the only one who can transform? Why is he the only one to enter Level 3 at the start. I can understand how he breaks into Zero Time, because of how he came from outside of the island (another major theme of this show), but everything about his appearance seems just too convenient.

My big constructive criticism for this series is that it should have tried harder during the school life bits. It should have shown more characters, it should have shown even more sides to them. It should have put in some real effort to constantly flesh out all of the 22 drivers would get their purpose in the series. Right now it just feels like too many of them were just thrown in to get to that magic number of 22 (the number of characters in the alphabet that all of the Cybodies are based on).
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Hana-Saku Iroha , Toriko and Tiger & Bunny

by psgels, posted in Hana-Saku Iroha, Some Quick First Impressions, Tiger & Bunny

Hana-Saku Iroha

Short Synopsis: Our lead character starts working at an inn.
Before this series started, I thought that it would be just a simple slice of life series. As it turns out though, Hana-Saku Iroha is as much slice of life as it is a drama. this series made excellent use of its first episode, and it really did a lot in just twenty minutes, especially for a series that will be 26 episodes long. It showed the lead character before, and after she moves to her grandmother after her mother pretty much abandons her. It’s both light-hearted, but also already showed what a huge change in lifestyle the lead character went through. What makes this series especially great though, is how detailed it is. The entire cast is versatile, the slice of life is realistic, the dialogue feels very natural and inspired, and the animation is of PA Works usual high standards. This series is definitely interesting: its series are either really great, or not worth checking out at all. There’s hardly anything in between for me so far.
ED: Decent J-Rock
Potential: 85%

Toriko

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a straw hat and is a pirate.
No. No, no, no. They just didn’t do that. There must be some mistake. Did Toei really just use One Piece’s popularity to introduce the Toriko anime?! What the heck was Luffy doing there? What the heck was the entire One Piece cast doing there? Toei is known for their sell-outs and all, but this just takes the cake. It doesn’t even make any sense either: the One Piece cast just wanders off and runs into Toriko, with the rest of the episode just being people talking about food and eating. The One Piece cast was just… there. They were more obnoxious than helpful. And as for Toriko, the only thing it pretty much has going for it is its creature design. Seriously, I am no fan of Shounen Jump and all, but setting aside To Love-Ru, Toriko has to be the worst Shounen Jump anime I’ve seen in a long, long while and this episode showed that Toei has no intention whatsoever of making something good out of it. This was a terrible introduction, for a show that basically advertises poaching to young kids. Toei already have more than enough money. This is commercialization at its worst.
OP: “Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow?”
ED: At least the song is decent here.
Potential: 0%

Tiger & Bunny

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a superhero who fights crime.
This season rocks. I mean, for one: only four series have premiered so far, and already we have two of them that features main characters that are older than 30. Heck, the lead of Tiger & Bunny actually has a daughter; when was the last time that we actually had such a series? On top of that, I love the concept of this series, as a kind of semi-satire on modern mass media that’s focused around a program that exploits superheroes, complete with sponsors and everything. The action is excellent, combining both great stunts and nice humour, and it just keeps changing dynamically due to all of the different characters involved. Characters who already have all kinds of charms. This can make for a very interesting series, especially if it will go beyond 13 episodes. My complaint about it is that it does tend to overuse CG, and the director of the whole Superhero show was a bit of a stereotypical corporate bastard who’ll do anything for money. Apart from that, this was a wonderful episode.
OP: The OP is just a collection of boring still shots and a dull J-rock song, though.
ED: As excellent as the OST is, this is just another dull J-rock song.
Potential: 90%

Some Quick First Impressions: Nichijou, Dog Days and X-Men

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, X-Men

Nichijou

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a random schoolgirl.
There’s no shortage of creativity in Nichijou. Its entire premise is based around the fact that it’s about the every day lives of a group of random school girls who live in a world in which anything can happen. This episode shows random explosions, androids and goats and the characters don’t even seem to find them unusual. That’s what’s good about Nichijuo. Its problem is that that’s also pretty much the only praise I have for this series. Unlike K-On and Lucky Star, this show tries to be a comedy… and it’s just not funny. It does not know what punchlines are, nor how to build up a good joke. It’s full of randomness for the sake of randomness, and seems to believe that just by doing something completely random, it can get funny, though such a thing already got old in the OVA. In the same way, the characters aren’t much to write home about. Kyoani has this thing with characters who are cute for the sake of being cute, and this is no exception. Nichijou just tries way too hard to be mainstream and popular. It’s just too forced.
OP: Badly sung and not really special.
ED: Again a boring song with that just feels like a copy paste of just about every other ED out there.
Potential: 30%

Dog Days

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the legendary savior for a country of dog people.
That was just insulting. This show had the privilege of being anime original, and yet the creators actually come with this kind of crap? The creators of Nanoha A’s have sunk to a completely new depth here. this was by far the worst I’ve ever seen from them. I can see the intentions of the creators: creating a fantasy setting where two countries have to participate in all kinds of fantastic games at fantastic setting hols potential to be an enjoyable and fun series. But this was just so ridiculously poorly executed. It committed just about every flaw imaginable. The characters are a joke, the setting of having dog people fight cat people, surrounded by teenagers with unexplained superpowers is equal to a slap in the face. The character designs are utterly terrible, the script is abysmal, and the worst thing is that it actually believes that it’s funny and witty. It refuses to make proper use of its silly setting, and it doesn’t even make jokes. It just expects tot get laughs from… nothing. This is… this is even worse than Rio Rainbow Gate. At least that series was aware that it was terrible.
OP: Boring visuals and boring song.
ED: Ridiculously generic.
Potential: 0%

X-Men

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a bunch of mutants who fight crime.
That was actually… pretty amazing here. Seriously, this episode hit a ton of right buttons, and sets the X-Men already one step higher above Wolverine. The graphics were utterly gorgeous, the atmosphere is just awesome, and already this show has put in a lot of characterization for its five main characters: Xavier, Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine and Beast. The atmosphere is heavy and the drama tends to get a bit sappy at times, but it all works surprisingly well with each other. Plus, this show also isn’t afraid to sometimes toy with its characters (the joke around Wolverine’s entrance especially was hilarious, in a “couldn’t resist”-way). As for Madhouse’s usual acting problem: the thing is that the character-designs of this series are utterly amazing. The creators not only gave a wonderful rendition of the X-Men in anime form, but they gave every single character, even the minor ones, a unique and individual look. That’s obviously harder to animate, but even then the animators do a pretty good job here. Instead, my qualm is that the voice actors should have tried to be a bit more varied, and they’re a tad too hammy at times. On the other hand though, the soundtrack is yet again amazing, and at this rate it could get even better than Wolverine’s. Seriously, ti’s been a while since the start of a season has been this impressive.
OP: Best one of the Marvel Anime so far!
ED: Again, no vocals, and a good way to close off each episode.
Potential: 85%

Bakuman Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Bakuman




Bakuman was the slice of life series of this season. It shows the struggles of two guys as they aim to get their own manga published in Shounen Jump (or Jack, as it’s called here). It’s slow-paced and really not much happens for the standrds of a 25-episode series, but if you like the kind of series that take their time to tell a story the nit has nice things to offer.

Bakuman is slow, but never stagnates. It is a shounen jump adaptation itself, and in the same veins it’s constantly pushing its own story forward, albeit with tiny steps at a time. Moritaka and Akito grow into solid main characters, and also the side-characters all have their charms. The show also offers a nice look into the process of making a manga, along with the process of getting such a thing actually published.

Nothing really stands out for this show aside from a few select episodes, but it’s a perfect series to just sit back, watch and relax to. Its content and plot are definitely interesting to keep your attention, though it is a hard show to get into. It takes quite a while for the characters to get some signfiicant development to the point where they’re actually interesting enough, and this show is full of shounen cliches until that point. Becuase of that, I can’t fully recommend this series yet before having gotten the chance to judge its second season (because yes, that ending does leave you hanging a bit without resolving much or making much come together).

Overall Bakuman should have used its time a bit more efficiently. I know that the screenshots above make it seem like really exciting, but that’s just because the manga it’s based on is fast-paced. The anime isn’t. There are really few series that can claim to have as much time as Bakuman to tell their stories, and with that in mind the pacing does move rather slow and overall, too little happens for a 25 episode series. It does a lot of thing sirght, though.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Slow, but solid.
Characters: 8/10 – The cast of this show is dynamic and interesting to watch… as soon as they’ve received some development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Neither impressive nor flawed, the animation is simple but does what it needs to do.
Setting: 8/10 – The analysis on the manga making process isn’t anything deep, but interesting nonetheless.

Suggestions:
Touch
Glass Mask 2005
Hikaru no Go

Bakuman – 25

by psgels, posted in Bakuman



A decent ending. It’s not bad, but it didn’t stand out either. It was probably the most shounen episode of this entire series: the lead couple got through, while some of the minor rivals did not and have to wait for their next chance. Not very exciting, although the creators did do a nice job on the build-up and the arduous wait.

Overall, Bakuman never really made itself stand out, aside from perhaps one episode in the middle (the one where Niizuma Eiji suddenly decided to write the wrong manga and where Moritaka and Akito suddenly switched over to a battle manga). Bakuman has been more of a show to just casually watch, which it did nicely, and it kept my attention, but I’m still feeling like I’m missing something here.

In any case, for a series that you all forced me to blog, it was pretty interesting. I still really like the way that I’ve been having this contest for four years now, and yet you somehow always manage to pick out a different series: Gundam 00, Tytania, Kimi ni Todoke and Bakuman all were wonderfully diverse, and I’m definitely going to do this again for Autumn 2011.

Now that most of the Autumn 2010 has ended (with the exception of Star Driver, which will end tomorrow), it’s also time to look back on the past Autumn Season. And overall, I’d call it interesting, fun, yet also underwhelming. The thing is, that Autumn Seasons always have many more series than Winter Seasons. And yet none of the series that premiered during Autumn 2010 came close to matching the top three series of Winter 2011.

It had a lot of interesting (Yakumo, Letter Bee), unique (Panty and Stocking, Soredemo Machi) and hilarious (Milky Holmes, Squid Girl, Kuragehime) series, and yet none of them really stood out or ended up as amazing, and all of the ones that did have ambition were held back by something (almost always having to do with being too short and failing to actually notice that). We’ve had more major seasons that only showed four shows to continue past 13 episodes, but the shows that did continue were absolutely amazing. Take Spring 2008: Himitsu and Real Drive were some of the very few series that were actually long, but they really were some amazing and unique series. Here, Letter Bee, Bakuman and Star Driver: they all just didn’t want to be the hit of the season, it seems. Instead, it mostly stands out as an overall very fun season to watch, because again: there were a lot of fun and interesting series.
Rating: (Enjoyable)