To Aru Majutsu no Index II Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews




Despite its faults, I liked the first season of Index. It had an interesting backstory that looked at science versus magic, It was a bit inconsistent, but that was parrt of its charm. Every arc was different and interesting in its own way, which always made me guess what it would focus on next. The second season, though… I just can’t call it as good as the first. There were just too many things that feel half-assed.

Index II still follows the format of various arcs, ranging from two to six episodes. It’s just that the short arcs feel too short, and the long arcs feel way too long. This show has become completely unbalanced in the process, and it somehow lost its ability to determine how much time each arc needs. The short arcs still have their own charms in the way that they are concise and to the point. The problem really lies in the long arcs.

In order to fill up space the creators bring up endless strings of fanservice. The fanservice in this series in particular is terrible because it just keeps repeating itself with exactly the same set-up over and over. In just about every episode we are forced to sit through some horribly forced set-up where a guy (most often the male lead Touma) walks into a naked girl. It’s completely pointless, and even worse these scenes are so numerous, poorly timed and written that they just keep destroying the atmosphere that the rest of this show was trying to build up.

Beyond that, though, when you look at the big picture I also just can’t help but wonder what the entire point of this second season was. During most of its arcs, I just get the feeling like the creators are stalling or time and waiting for a hypothetical third season to wrap everything up. The different arcs all accomplish relatively little in both character and setting development. After this series, we hardly learned anything new about the cast of characters, aside from some introductions. Meanwhile, the purpose of most of the arcs in terms of the setting was establishing that the Roman Catholic Church is the enemy. It has completely lost the variety of the first season as well.

It does have its moments where it redeems itself, though. A few arcs are actually quite good, especially the shorter ones, but also near the final episodes the show picks itself up again. Index remains an action series, and when the action does pop up, it can get really good and creative. Purely interms of suspense, there’s nothing wrong with this show. It just fails at telling its story. Have I also mentioned the way that it tends to resort to Deus ex Machina with wrapping up its stories?

Storytelling: 7/10 – As a thriller it can work pretty well. It just is completely unbalanced, way too long and way too repetitive.
Characters: 7/10 – Doesn’t really add much upon the cast. Plus, they can get really annoying and repetitive during their “light hearted antics”.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Not as good as in the first season, but it still has a number of excellent-looking action scenes.
Setting: 8/10 – It doesn’t do much with it, but granted: when it does it shows that research was spent on making this into an original and unique setting here.

Suggestions:
– Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu
– Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra
– Shikabane Hime

Gosick – 11

by psgels, posted in Gosick



Okay. Whoa.

To be honest, I was nearly ready to drop this show. I was originally planning to just stick with it for a few more episodes, until I figured out which spring series I wanted to blog. The diamond arc, along with its long hiatus caused this show to be underwhelming for more than a month, and I had pretty much lost my interest before I started watching this episode.

And suddenly this show comes with a very good backstory of Grevil. That really came out of nowhere. Most of this episode was still full of unlikable antics, but the story that it tried to tell got more impressive by the minute. It’s this episode that really convinced me: this show sucks at telling short stories. But it actually gets very good whenever it looks at its main storyline. Because of that, I’m hoping for the second half of this series to be entirely dedicated to plot-related stories, instead of just random ones that are only there to fill time.

And yeah. I admit: they had me. I did not think that this show was witty enough to come up with a good explanation of Grevil’s hair, and it did. I also now understand why all the manga readers were so vague when talking about the reason for his hair being like this, because that really is something you don’t want to get spoiled about.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Yumekui Merry – 12

by psgels, posted in Yumekui Merry



I’ve complained that Mitletein wasn’t really a villain that was threatening. She wasn’t portrayed well enough for me to really get the feeling that I should be wary for what she was able to do, and felt like one of those stereotypical evil villains.

Okay, so this episode fixed that. It’s here where Mistletain set herself apart with her bold moves. Villains who play with their food are nothing new, but in this episode Mistletein really nailed both being ruthless and being playful. The way in which that teacher just outright invited himself to the house of his next victim. I like that boldness.

What I also like is how well this episode made use of its own setting for the finale, with the revelation that Leon couldn’t fire his gun because he needed to charge it with the equivalent of a bunch of corpses. It’s again wonderfully blurry on the moral scale, especially considering how Play’s death fit in all of this. Her death is convenient in the way that it allows that gun to fire, ,and yet it also destroys both Play and her vessel. And at the same time, in a fight against Mistletein, a death like this was bound to happen, with the way that she has been slaughtering her victims.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Fractale Review – 77,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Fractale




Noitamina is an excellent time-slot that is about to enter its seventh year now. Throughout all the series that it showed, I can only name two series that I really consider to be worse than Fractale: Library Wars and Jyu Oh Sei. Fractale is an enjoyable adventure-series. But it SO has no idea what it’s doing.

The thing with this show is that it completely lacks any sort of vision. It advertises itself with the “unique” Fractale-system: a system where people are separated and lost the need for physical touch. It’s a fascinating setting, so of course this show doesn’t bother to spend any time at all on what SHOULD HAVE BEEN the central theme of this show.

Instead we get a generic adventure plot surrounding a bunch of annoying teenagers that sometimes from out of nowhere receives a huge mood whiplash into dark plot turn of events. At any point where this show introduces a new interesting concept or idea, you can bet your hat that it’ll only get abandoned quickly, in favour of its main cast, and BY GOD are they annoying. Especially Clain suffers from the “bad main character”-syndrome with his whining, but also the rest of the cast doesn’t really get their full chance to shine in this series.

The solve salvation of this series is that it did have an excellent team of writers and animators on board. The animation is consistently excellent, especially for TV-standards. There are really few still frames, if any. And as annoying and short-sighted as the characters sometimes are, the consistent animation does give them a unique dynamic. This show is also great at building up tension, telling climaxes and making its graphics, music and storytelling all come together in one whole. Especially episode 7 is an amazing example of this.

This show knows how to tell a story. It just completely fails at deciding what story it wants to tell and so we have to sit through episodes at a time of nothing happening, only to rush through other actually good and interesting parts. This show doesn’t fit 11 episodes. Heck, I doubt whether 26 episodes would have been enough for all of the ideas that it just skims over. At the end, it’s just another adventure. It’s quite an enjoyable adventure, but don’t expect much more.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Nice sense of adventure in terms of the small picture. In terms of the big picture though… not so much.
Characters: 7/10 – Decent characterization, but the characters themselves are really, really annoying.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Excellent vibrant animation.
Setting: 7/10 – Had potential. It just never uses it.

Suggestions:
– Laputa: Castle in the Sky
– Shangri-La
– Popolocrois Story 1998

Fractale – 11

by psgels, posted in Fractale



Just… what the hell was it that this episode was trying to do? With most rushed endings, you can at least see the creators’ intentions. There are at least some parts that work well. This final episode of Fractale, though… it felt like ten different people were put in charge and they all had different ideas on how to end this thing. Everything this episode tried to do pretty much failed because it has no impact in terms of the big picture. All of it just felt done for the heck of it:
– Phryne’s father’s exposition was just exposition for the heck of it. We should have seen this five episodes earlier.
– Phryne stabbing her father with those “hello I am possessed”-eyes. What was the point of that?
– That blond leader blowing himself up: Where did that come from?
– Granitz’s death was the obligatory death at the final episode. It had no point or purpose and made no impact whatsoever.
– Phryne’s “I decided to sacrifice myself”-speech was interesting, until Clain went “No! I’m the one who will decide over your future!”.
– God being a sixteen year old girl in modern times should not have been introduced this late! Now she just looks like Haruhi fan-fiction.
– The aftermath felt rushed, especially with the way in which everyone was remembering Clain. You really didn’t know him long enough for that…
– That coma has to be the worst written coma I have seen.

The thing is, all of these ideas would have worked if enough time was spent on them. Instead, the creators fail to make any of them work. None of them makes any impact, none of them are detailed. They all feel done for the heck of it. This series definitely did not understand what it means to be a Noitamina-series.

So in the end, my fears at the start of this season were proven partially true: Mari Okada just could not handle three series at the same time. Both Gosick and Fractale contain flaws that she really should have been able to notice, and it’s obvious that most of her attention went to make Hourou Musuko an as good adaptation as possible. With mediocre directors, Gosick and Fractale just couldn’t get themselves someone to really spend effort on making everything work in the big picture. Unfortunately, she’s going to do the same next season: with Gosick continuing for another season, she’ll again be doing three series at the same time with Hana-Saku Iroha and Ano Hana. It’s a shame to see such a talented writer pull a Shinbo.
Rating: — (Lacking)

March Summary

by psgels, posted in Monthly Summaries

This month… was crazy. It was completely different from any other month, there was just so much going on. It’s not just a month of one of the worst catastrophes to hit Japan since the Second World war. Also in terms of anime releases this month was just unique. It’s been a month of extremes for me, best explained through numbers.

First of all, this is the sixth March summary I’ve written on this site. Throughout all these six years, I don’t think I ever have watched as little as 15 series at the same time. This isn’t on purpose either: I just don’t think that there are any other TV-series that were worth my time this season, especially considering how bloody few series continued over from the past Autumn Season. This really turned out to be a series of quality over quantity: three series were completely amazing despite being really short, and they were the ones that made such a small season memorable.

And yet, despite these low numbers, AND having a job that keeps me busy for 36 hours each week, I have never been as active on this blog as I have been during the last month. With this post, I have just broken my own record of the biggest amount of posts made in one month: 86 of them. The movie spree I’ve been having and Supernatural had a big influence in this, but it’s not just that.

Even though there were few TV-series this month, I don’t think I have ever seen a month where so many OVAs and movies were released. Seriously, they just all kept coming, it’s like everyone and his dog released something here, even when not taking Supernatural into account. The quality of most of these OVAs and Movies also was really good. There was a lot of interesting stuff amongst them, both from one shots and from larger ones. It all culminated into one wonderful month of anime.

#15 (18) – Dragon Crisis – (5,5/10)

This final month was the worst we’ve seen so far here! I mean, the last three arcs were completely stupid and moronic. They made no sense whatsoever and their only purpose was to increase Ryuuji’s harem. Overall this was one huge waste of time.

#14 (14) – Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? – (6,25/10)

This entire month of Zombie was dedicated to the incredibly stupid drama around Hellscythe. It’s a shame, because if it focused on the creativity of the first half then it could have been very enjoyable.The nail in this one’s coffin was the abysmal episode 12, though. I’d like to thank this episode for leaving a really bad aftertaste for this series. Even worse than that multiple Deus ex Machina ending.

#13 (13) – Gosick – (6,5/10)

Gosick episodes have a spark of potential in them. Unfortunately, this spark was completely gone this month. Only two episodes aired, but those were completely unnecessary in this series.

#12 (16) – To Aru Majutsu no Index – (7,75/10)

This is what the entire series should have been. I finally get the feeling that this series is actually moving somewhere again. It’s still not as good as the first season, but at the least I’m glad that this show did not annoy me in the slightest this month.

#11 (15) – Fractale – (7,75/10)

Fractale is an adventure series whose biggest problem is that it has no idea what it’s doing. As a light-hearted adventure series this would have worked nicely, but at the same time this series is also trying to sound deep. And that’s where it fails completely. As a whole, this series is enjoyable. It’s just that the individual ingredients don’t mesh together at all.

#10 (11) – Wolverine – (8/10)

Again, the lack of depth isn’t going to make Wolverine into anything amazing. But as a simple action series this month kicked ass. The finale really was fun and exciting and the creators threw a lot at Wolverine in order to keep things interesting. It did justice to all of the characters, as simple as they were and overall I had a lot of fun watching and blogging this.

#9 (8) – Bakuman – (8,25/10)

Overall, Bakuman is one of those shows where the pacing could have gone up a notch. Still I have to give the past episodes credit for making me think that they were moving kindof fast, while in fact they actually weren’t. It’s still a solid show about making a manga, though. The characters are continuing to grow as well.

#8 (12) – Kimi ni Todoke – (8,25/10)

Episode 9. That was the episode that by far stood out above all of the other Kimi ni Todoke episodes. FINALLY, after so much waiting, this show finally got down to business, and it was glorious.

#7 (7) – Yumekui Merry – (8,25/10)

Before I’ll get enthusiastic about this show again, I first want to see some kind of second season announcement. Yumekui Merry is amazingly written. Episode 13 just isn’t the right time to end it. Not with a villain like Mistletain.

#6 (4) – Star Driver – (8,25/10)

The thing with Star Driver at the moment is that with still one episode remaining, it’s currently balancing on the edge of a cliff. The build-up to the ending has been completely unconventional, and if it can make this work it’ll be brilliant. If it can’t though, this will mean a very rushed ending. Whether or not this month’s episodes were good is entirely dependent on that final episode, but at least the play episode was awesome.

#5 (5) – Supernatural The Animation – (8,5/10)

Supernatural’s biggest problem turned out to be its acting. I don’t mean the voice acting, but instead the way that the creators manage to portray the characters on the screen. It feels stiff and undynamic, and does get in the way of making them believable, especially in Sam’s case. Apart from that though, it has some excellent stories to tell. The first twelve episodes have ranged a bit in quality, but there were some real gems among them. The graphics also look consistently excellent.

#4 (6) – Letter Bee – (8,5/10)

The Cabernet turned out to be a big weakness here. The creators just couldn’t do anything interesting with it in the end. As for the rest of the show though, I have to praise the creators for actually doing pretty good stuff with the characters here. This show actually received closure. Something rare amongst manga-based series where the manga hasn’t finished yet.

#3 (2) – Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica – (9/10)

Madoka Magica only aired two episodes but the episodes that it did air were amazing. The background story is deep, and continuing this series’ trend to deconstruct the mahou shoujo genre. Bring on that finale!

#2 (1) – Level E – (9/10)

So, in the end it did turn out to be impossible to reach the stellar heights of the first arc. Nevertheless, Level E has been an incredibly varied and interesting series that can both tell great stories and be side-splitting hilarious. Especially the baseball episode was an awesome mystery story, but just about every episode here was incredibly addictive, even when they weren’t funny. This series always has me on the edge of my seat.

#1 (3) – Hourou Musuko – (9/10)

Hourou Musuko ended magnificently It closed itself off perfectly, and yet the final episodes put in a massive amount of character development. Nitori’s development was just amazing, I just loved how the romance in this show worked out, and the introduction of Doi gave a completely different twist to this series. Just about every episode had something amazing, and some of the plot twists just blew my mind. This month did show 5 episodes as compared to Madoka Magica’s only having two, but BY GOD did it make use of them!

Hourou Musuko Review – 87,5/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Hourou Musuko




The past season had three series that really stood with head and shoulders above the rest. They were all genuinely good and took their genres into new and fresh directions. Hourou Musuko takes a look at cross dressers. Most of time when they’re portrayed in a medium, they’re portrayed for laughs or flamboyance. Hourou Musuko however is entirely built around showing the issues that boys who feel like they are girls (and vice versa) run into while growing up. And it does so brilliantly.

For starters, this is one of those series that has a slow pacing, yet somehow manages to make a ton of stuff happen in each episode. It’s full of subtlety, and because of this it can get a ton of genuine drama out of the characters using its limited time of only 11 episode excellently.

This show actually made quite a bold statement by not animating the first X volumes of the manga it’s based on, but instead starting somewhere in the middle. The great thing about this show is that despite this, it still doesn’t feel incomplete. Characters sometimes refer to things that have happened to them in the past, but it’s apparent enough to the viewers to figure out what happened. This method gave the characters both a rich past and future and it gives the impression that there really is much more to them than what we see in the series. It’s a terrific way of characterizing them, and the entire cast of this series pretty much feels incredibly genuine and believable. Oh, and finally we’ve found another show that takes a realistic look at romance, as opposed to the overly sappy view you see in nearly every anime.

It’s a series for which I’ve had hardly anything to criticize for. The story is perfectly balanced, the plot twists are amazing in their subtlety, the cast is amazing, the animation brings both the cast and setting come alive and there is hardly anything that this show does wrong. If I had to nitpick at something then it’s that the characters are portrayed a tad too mature for their age. But so what? This is a wonderful portrayal of growing up. The cross-dressing is only a tiny part of this series. There’s so much to this show, and it’s only 11 episodes long.

Storytelling: 9/10 – Wonderfully subtle, with some amazing plot twists.
Characters: 10/10 – Amazing portrayal of young teenagers growing up,and their issues dealing with it. Wonderful development.
Production-Values: 8/10 – This show is really good at far away shots, with restrained animation, still bringing its cast to life.
Setting: 8/10 – Excellent portrayal of a school in japan. This show knows how to ring its environments to life.

Suggestions:
– Aoi Hana
– Asatte no Houkou
– Sasameki Koto

Hourou Musuko – 11

by psgels, posted in Hourou Musuko



Okay, so this was supposed to be episode 12, even though it was labelled everywhere in the episode as episode 11. It contained no recycled material whatsoever however, so I guess it’s safe to assume that it was really episode twelve. I’m not the only one who is a bit confused, right?

In any case, this was an excellent closure to an excellent series. Even with an episode cut out, Hourou Musuko felt like it had no weaknesses whatsoever to me. It consistently engaging, from start to finish. This episode really ended at the perfect point, with Nitori’s voice changing. It denotes the start of a huge change for him. The time where his body starts changing has finally arrived, and within a few years, he’s going to make the decision whether or not to get surgery.

And yet there was so much more that happened in this episode that developed so many other characters: Doi, Chiba, Takatsuki, Anna: this show took its chance to give all of them even more development than they already had.

Overall, Hourou Musuko understood what it means to be a Noitamina series: you only get 11 or 12 episodes, and that’s the length that you have to work with. They took an excellent part of the manga and made it feel like a complete story: characters have lives that continue on both before and after this show takes place, and yet the series feels complete. I especially loved that talk that Nitori and Anna had, right before the play started.

I’m looking forward to next year’s Noitamina. C is bound to be awesome. Even Kuchuu Buranko, Kenji Nakamura’s least impressive work, was really enjoyable and interesting. Anohana meanwhile is one of those shows that doesn’t seem to belong in Noitamina at first sight. Along with Hana Saku Iroha, it’ll have to take Hourou Musuko’s place as the serious teenaged slice of drama of the season. If they’ll end up as well balanced and written as Hourou Musuko, we’re really in for a treat here.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

OVA Impressions: Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi

by psgels, posted in OVA Impressions



Yeah, this is pretty much Junjo Romantica 3. It doesn’t even try to hide this: the character designs are very similar, albeit a bit more detailed, the set-up is the same, the style is the same, and the way that the characters interact with each other is the same. I know that this is all from the same creators and all, but couldn’t they at least have tried to look a bit different?

In any case though, the irony is that Sekai-ichi Hatsukoi has a good chance of becoming the best show of Studio Deen so far this year. I mean it’s not like Chiaki Kon is a bad director or anything. It’s not original at all or anything, and the whole set-up is… contrived to say the least, but like Junjo Romantica , at the very least it has a good dialogue and chemistry between the lead characters. It also avoids a bunch of gay show tropes, like acknowledging that females actually EXIST.

But yeah, that set-up. It was definitely trying way too hard here. We have this guy who finds out that he’s been stalked by one of his underclassmen and confessed to. It’s someone who he did not know before. So, what’s his first reaction? Yeah. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s have some sex”. I know that later in the episode he says that he has huge family problems and all, but that makes this show even more emo.

Based on just this episode, I don’t think that I’ll keep watching it. Like Junjo Romantica, it knows when to be funny and especially the inner monologues are pretty nice here. I just don’t feel like watching something I was lukewarm about a second time.
OVA Episode Rating: 7,5/10

Kimi ni Todoke Second Season Review – 80/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Kimi ni Todoke




Each year, before the start of each Autumn Season, I hold a little poll in which you can all force me to blog a series I wouldn’t normally even consider to cover. The only time at which I could not complete such a series was in 2009, with Kimi ni Todoke’s first season. It had very solid production values; Production IG made sure of that. However, as a romance it just had no idea what it wanted to do. Any scene that focused on Sawako’s (the lead character) growth as a character was overshadowed by its romantic drivel that refused to go anywhere.

It really was the classic syndrome of romance shows, where the creators just refuse to let relationships play out normally, in favour of forced and artificial cheese and drama. It’s because of this that I wasn’t looking forward to its second season. But lo and behold: it actually redeemed itself a bit. The biggest surprises of this season definitely lie in its sequels.

This second season really shows that the creators took a good look at what happened to the first season, with the intention to fix its major flaws. They put aside the romantic nonsense and simply constructed a series with the sole purpose of resolving the romantic relationship between the two lead characters. It’s an in-depth look at how the relationship between the two lead characters grows. It’s no longer another simple “will they won’t they”-story, but instead the series changes into a “when, how and why will they hook up”. A much more interesting premise, and to make matters even better: the creators also figured out how to use slow pacing. Instead of using it for stalling, they use it to slowly build up everything they need, deliver one hell of a climax, and afterwards carefully wrap up everything that needed to be wrapped up. It’s a massive improvement over the first season.

At the same time though, I wouldn’t say that this is the second coming of White Album. The fact remains that the first season just left a lot to be desired, and it didn’t even seem to build up for this second season. The second season does make use of some of the things that happened throughout the first season, but it mostly feels like the creators went “oh crap, we actually need to develop these people”. Kimi ni Todoke still is an overly pure portrayal of teenaged romance: great to swoon away, but at the same time it’s not like the story behind it is really deep and thoughtful. The characters remain one-sighted teenagers who only seem to think about romance and the drama still is based entirely around the fact that they refuse to talk to each other. They’re just much better written and portrayed than in the first season.

Storytelling: 8/10 – Has exactly what the first season lacked: focus. Carefully builds up its simple but effective romance.
Characters: 8/10 – They refused to develop in the first season. In the second season however, they do, and IT’S ABOUT BLOODY TIME.
Production-Values: 8/10 – Production IG is solid as expected, though there are too many distorted faces.
Setting: 8/10 – Nothing special nor nothing bad here aside from an overly idyllic portrayal of teenaged life. But then again, something tells me that was very much intentional.

Suggestions:
– Bokura ga Ita
– Aoi Hana
– True Tears